it  DEVELOPMENT 
OF  EMBROIDERY 
IN  AMERICA 


CANDACE  WHEELER 


WE  shall  not  see  the  famous  Bayeux 
tapestry  at  the  Royal  Academy 
next  year  after  all,  I  hear.  It  was  to 
have  been  brought  over  —  or  at  any  rate 
a  part  of  it  —  for  the  French  Exhibition 
which  is  being  held  here  early  next  year. 
The  Royal  Academy  some  months  ago  asked 
the  Louvre  Museum  in  Paris  if  the  tapestry 
might  be  brought  to  London.  They  answered 
promptly  saying  they  thought  it  might  be 
done.  But  it  cannot  'be  done  and  it  is  a  pity, 
for  the  famous  Bayeux  tapestry,  which  is  no*- 
a  tapestry  at  all  but  a  piece  of  embroidery  on 
a  very  long,  narrow  strip  of  cloth,  is  one  of 
the  marvels  of  France 

Not  Tapestry. 

I    HAVE  always  wondered,  thinking  of  the 
dark   and  sombre   work  of  the  Gobelins, 
why  the  embroidery  came  to  be  known  as  a 
tapestry. 

It  is  nothing  like  a  real  tapestry.  The  back- 
ground is  still  very  white—  ^even  though  it 
was  once  used  as  a  cover  for  rifles  in  troublous 
days  in  France  —  and  the  wool  of  the  em- 
broidery is  still  as  brightly  coloured  as  when 
it  was  made. 

One  Whole    Piece. 

JV'OK  was  it  made  by  Queen  Matilda,  al- 
though  it  is  still  called  "  Queen  Matilda's 
tapestry."  it  shows  the  conquest  of  England 
by  William  the  Conqueror,  and  people  now 
say  that  Odo,  Bishop  of  Bayeux,  William  the 
Conqueror's  half-brother,  had  it  made.  1  ex- 
pect a  great  many  women  spent  a  long  time 
over  it. 

it  is  not  coming  to  London  because  there  is 
no  join  in  it. 

They  Live  On  It  ! 


Louvre  forgot  that  when  they  said 
that  part  at  least  might  be  brought. 
Naturally  the  Mayor  of  Bayeux  will  not  hear 
of  letting  the  whole  tapestry  cross  the  Chan- 
nel. tie  says  the  town  lives  on  its  famous 
tapestry  and  the  visitors  wtao  come  there 
from  all  parts  of  the  world  to  see  it. 

One  could  hardly  expect  him  to  take  a  pair 
of  scissors  and  cut  off  a  small  portion  to  lend 
to  London 


THE  DEVELOPMENT 
OF  EMBROIDERY  IN 
AMERICA  *g  *g 

By   Candace  Wheeler 


Painted  by  Dora  Wheeler  Keith 
CANDACE  WHEELER 
From  the  painting  by  her  daughter  Dora  Wheeler  Keith. 


THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF 
EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

By 
CANDACE   WHEELER 

Illustrated 


HARPER  85  BROTHERS  PUBLISHERS 

NEW  YORK  AND  LONDON 

MCMXXI 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

Copyright,  1921,  by  Harper  &  Brothers 
Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 


CONTENTS 

CRAP.  PAGB 

Introductory.     The  Story  of  the  Needle      .  3 

I.  Beginnings  in  the  New  World 10 

II.  The  Crewel  work  of  Our  Puritan  Mothers  .     .  17 

III.  Samplers  and  a  Word  About  Quilts       ...  48 

IV.  Moravian  Work,  Portraiture,  French  Embroid- 

ery and  Lacework          62 

V.  Berlin  Woolwork 96 

VI.  Revival  of  Embroidery,  and  the  Founding  of 

the  Society  of  Decorative  Art   ....  102 

VII.  American  Tapestry 121 

VIII.  The  Bayeux  Tapestries 144 


2039805 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

CANDACE  WHEELER.  From  the  painting  by  her  daughter 
Dora  Wheeler  Keith Frontispiece 

MOCCASINS  OF  PORCUPINE  QUILLWORK.  Made  by 
Sioux  Indians Facing  12 

PIPE  BAGS  OF  PORCUPINE  QUILLWORK.  Made  by 
Sioux  Indiana 12 

MAN'S  JACKET  OF  PORCUPINE  QUILLWORK.  Made 
by  Sioux  Indians 14 

MAN'S  JACKET  OF  PORCUPINE  QUILLWORK.  Made 
by  Plains  Indians 14 

CREWEL  DESIGN,  drawn  and  colored,  which  dates  back  to 
Colonial  times 18 

TESTER  embroidered  in  crewels  in  shades  of  blue  on  white 
homespun  linen.  Said  to  have  been  brought  to  Essex,  Mass., 
in  1640,  by  Madam  Susanna,  wife  of  Sylvester  Eveleth 22 

RAISED  EMBROIDERY  ON  BLACK  VELVET.  Nineteenth 
century  American 22 

QUILTED  COVERLET  made  by  Ann  Gurnee 26 

HOMESPUN  WOOLEN  BLANKET  with  King  George's  Crown 
embroidered  with  home-dyed  blue  yarn  in  the  corner.  From 
the  Burdette  home  at  Fort  Lee,  N.  J.,  where  Washington  was 
entertained 26 

CHEROKEE  ROSE  BLANKET,  made  about  1830,  of  homespun 
wool  with  "Indian  Rose"  design  about  nineteen  inches  in  diam- 
eter worked  in  the  corners  in  home-dyed  yarns  of  black,  red, 
yellow,  and  dark  green.  From  the  Westervelt  collection ....  26 

BED  SET,  Keturah  Baldwin  pattern,  designed,  dyed,  and 
worked  by  The  Deerfield  Society  of  Blue  and  White  Needlework, 
Deerfield,  Mass 32 

BED  COVERS  worked  in  candle  wicking 32 

SAMPLER  worked  by  Adeline  Bryant  in  1826,  now  in  the  pos- 
session of  Anna  D.  Trowbridge,  Hackensack,  N.  J 50 

[vii] 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


SAMPLER  embroidered  in  colors  on  6cru  linen,  by  Mary  Ann 
Marley,  aged  twelve,  August  30,  1820 Pacing  52 

SAMPLER  embroidered  in  brown  on  ecru  linen,  by  Martha  Car- 
ter Fitzhugh,  of  Virginia,  in  1793,  and  left  unfinished  at  her 
death 52 

SAMPLER  worked  by  Christiana  Baird.  Late  eighteenth  cen- 
tury American 54 

MEMORIAL  PIECE  worked  in  silks,  on  white  satin.  Sacred 
to  the  memory  of  Major  Anthony  Morse,  who  died  March 
22,  1805 54 

SAMPLER  of  Moravian  embroidery,  worked  in  1806,  by  Sarah 
Ann  Smith,  of  Smithtown,  L.  1 54 

SAMPLER  worked  by  Nancy  Dennis,  Argyle,  N.  Y.,  in  1810. .       56 
SAMPLER  worked  by  Nancy  McMurray ,  of  Salem,  N.  Y.,  in  1 793      56 

PETIT  POINT  PICTURE  which  belonged  to  President  John 
Quincy  Adams,  and  now  in  the  Dwight  M.  Prouty  collection . .  56 

SAMPLER  in  drawnwork,  ecru  linen  thread,  made  by  Anne 
Gower,  wife  of  Gov.  John  Endicott,  before  1628 60 

SAMPLER  embroidered  in  dull  colors  on  6cru  canvas  by  Mary 
Holingworth,  wife  of  Philip  English,  Salem  merchant,  married 
July,  1675,  accused  of  witchcraft  in  1692,  but  escaped  to  New 
York 60 

SAMPLER  worked  by  Hattie  Goodeshall,  who  was  born  February 
19,  1780,  in  Bristol 60 

NEEDLEBOOK  of  Moravian  embroidery  made  about  1850, 
now  in  the  possession  of  Mrs.  J.  N.  Myers,  Bethlehem,  Pa.  64 

MORAVIAN  EMBROIDERY  worked  by  Emily  E.  Reynolds, 
Plymouth,  Pa.,  in  1834,  at  the  age  of  twelve,  while  at  the  Mora- 
vian Seminary  in  Bethlehem,  and  now  owned  by  her  grand- 
daughter    64 

MORAVIAN  EMBROIDERY  from  Louisville,  Ky 66 

LINEN  TOWELS  embroidered  in  cross-stich.  Pennsylvania 
Dutch  early  nineteenth  century 70 

"THE  MEETING  OF  ISAAC  AND  REBECCA"— Moravian 
embroidered  picture,  an  heirloom  in  the  Reichel  family  of 

Bethlehem,  Pa.     Worked  by  Sarah  Kummer  about  1790 74 

[viii] 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


"SUFFER  LITTLE  CHILDREN  TO  COME  UNTO  ME"— 
Cross-stich  picture  made  about  1825,  now  in  the  possession  of 
the  Beckel  family,  Bethlehem,  Pa racing  74 

ABRAHAM  AND  ISAAC.  Kensington  embroidery  by  Mary 
Winifred  Hoskins,  of  Edenton,  N.  C.,  while  attending  an 
English  finishing  school  in  Baltimore  in  1814 76 

FIRE  SCREEN  embroidered  in  cross-stich  worsted. 78 

FIRE  SCREEN,  design,  "The  Scottish  Chieftain,"  embroidered 
in  cross-stich  by  Mrs.  Mary  H.  Cleveland  Allen 78 

FIRE  SCREEN  worked  about  1850  by  Miss  C.  A.  Granger,  of 
Canandaigua,  N.  Y 78 

EMBROIDERED  PICTURE  in  silks,  with  a  painted  sky 80 

CORNELIA  AND  THE  GRACCHI.  Embroidered  picture  in 
silks,  with  velvet  inlaid,  worked  by  Mrs.  Lydia  Very,  of  Salem, 
at  the  age  of  sixteen  while  at  Mrs.  Peabody '»  school 80 

CAPE  of  white  lawn  embroidered.    Nineteenth  century  American      84 

COLLARS  of  white  muslin  embroidered.  Nineteenth  century 
American 84 

BABY'S  CAP.  White  mull,  with  eyelet  embroidery.  Nineteenth 
century  American 86 

BABY'S  CAP.    Embroidered  mulL     1825 86 

COLLAR  of  white  embroidered  muslin.  Nineteenth  century 
American 86 

EMBROIDERED  SILK  WEDDING  WAISTCOAT,  1829. 
From  the  Westervelt  collection 88 

EMBROIDERED  WAIST  OF  A  BABY  DRESS,  1850.  From 
the  collection  of  Mrs.  George  Coe 88 

EMBROIDERY  ON  NET.  Border  for  the  front  of  a  cap  made 
about  1820 90 

VEIL  (unfinished)  hand  run  on  machine-made  net.  American 
nineteenth  century 90 

LACE  WEDDING  VEIL,  36x40  inches,  used  in  1806.  From 
the  collection  of  Mrs.  Charles  H.  Lozier 92 

HOMESPUN  LINEN  NEEDLEWORK  called  "Benewacka" 
by  the  Dutch.  The  threads  were  drawn  and  then  whipped  into 
a  net  on  which  the  design  was  darned  with  linen.  Made  about 
1800  and  used  in  the  end  of  linen  pillow  cases 92 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

BED  HANGING  of  polychrome  cross-stitch  appliqu6d  on  blue 
woolen  ground Facing  98 

NEEDLEPOINT  SCREEN  made  in  fine  and  coarse  point. 
Single  cross-stitch 98 

HAND-WOVEN  TAPESTRY  of  fine  and  coarse  needlepoint. .     100 

TAPESTRY  woven  on  a  hand  loom.  The  design  worked  in  fine 
point  and  the  background  coarse  point.  A  new  effect  in  hand 
weave  originated  at  the  Edgewater  Tapestry  Looms 100 

EMBROIDERED  MITS 104 

WHITE  COTTON  VEST  embroidered  in  colors.  Eighteenth- 
nineteenth  century  American 104 

WHITE  MULL  embroidered  hi  colors.  Eighteenth-nineteenth 
century  American 104 

EMBROIDERED  VALANCE,  part  of  set  and  spread  for  high- 
post  bedstead,  1788.  Worked  in  crewels  on  India  cotton,  by 
Mrs.  Gideon  Granger,  Canandaigua,  New  York 104 

DETAIL  of  linen  coverlet  worked  in  colored  wool 108 

LINEN  COVERLET  embroidered  in  Kensington  stitch  with 
colored  wool 108 

QUILTED  COVERLET  worked  entirely  by  hand 118 

DETAIL  of  quilted  coverlet 118 

THE  WINGED  MOON.  Designed  by  Dora  Wheeler  and  exe- 
cuted in  needle-woven  tapestry  by  The  Associated  Artists,  1883.  122 

SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY  DESIGN  TAPESTRY  PANEL     126 

THE  MIRACULOUS  DRAUGHT  OF  FISHES.  Arranged 
(from  photographs  made  in  London  of  the  original  cartoon  by 
Raphael,  in  the  Kensington  Museum)  by  Candace  Wheeler 
and  executed  in  needle-woven  tapestry  by  The  Associated 
Artists 130 

MINNEHAHA  LISTENING  TO  THE  WATERFALL.  Drawn 
by  Dora  Wheeler  and  executed  in  needle-woven  tapestry  by 
The  Associated  Artists,  1884 132 

APHRODITE.  Designed  by  Dora  Wheeler  for  needle-woven 
tapestry  worked  by  The  Associated  Artists,  1883 134 

FIGHTING  DRAGONS.  Drawn  by  Candace  Wheeler  and  em- 
broidered by  The  Associated  Artists,  1885 140 

THREE  SCENES  FROM  THE  BAYEUX  TAPESTRY. .  146 


THE  DEVELOPMENT 
OF  EMBROIDERY  IN 
AMERICA  °$  V 


INTRODUCTORY    A     THE  STORY 
OF  THE   NEEDLE 

THE  story  of  embroidery  includes  in  its  his- 
tory all  the  work  of  the  needle  since  Eve 
sewed  fig  leaves  together  in  the  Garden 
of  Eden.  We  are  the  inheritors  of  the 
knowledge  and  skill  of  all  the  daughters  of  Eve  in 
all  that  concerns  its  use  since  the  beginning  of  time. 
When  this  small  implement  came  open-eyed 
into  the  world  it  brought  with  it  possibilities 
of  well-being  and  comfort  for  races  and  ages  to 
come.  It  has  been  an  instrument  of  beneficence 
as  long  ago  as  "Dorcas  sewed  garments  and  gave 
them  to  the  poor,"  and  has  been  a  creator  of  beauty 
since  Sisera  gave  to  his  mother  "a  prey  of  needle- 
work, '  alike  on  both  sides. ' ' '  This  little  descriptive 
phrase — alike  on  both  sides — will  at  once  suggest 
to  all  needlewomen  a  perfection  of  method  almost 
without  parallel.  Of  course  it  can  be  done,  but  the 
skill  of  it  must  have  been  rare,  even  in  those  far-off 
days  of  leisure  when  duties  and  pleasures  did  not 
crowd  out  painstaking  tasks,  and  every  art  was 
carried  as  far  as  human  assiduity  and  invention 
could  carry  it. 

[3] 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

A  history  of  the  needlework  of  the  world  would 
be  a  history  of  the  domestic  accomplishment  of 
the  world,  that  inner  story  of  the  existence  of  man 
which  bears  the  relation  to  him  of  sunlight  to  the 
plant.  We  can  deduce  from  these  needle  records 
much  of  the  physical  circumstances  of  woman's 
long  pilgrimage  down  the  ages,  of  her  mental 
processes,  of  her  growth  in  thought.  We  can  judge 
from  the  character  of  her  art  whether  she  was  at 
peace  with  herself  and  the  world,  and  from  its 
status  we  become  aware  of  its  relative  importance 
to  the  conditions  of  her  life. 

There  are  few  written  records  of  its  practice  and 
growth,  for  an  art  which  does  not  affect  the  com- 
mercial gain  of  a  land  or  country  is  not  apt  to 
have  a  written  or  statistical  history,  but,  for- 
tunately in  this  case,  the  curious  and  valuable 
specimens  which  are  left  to  us  tell  their  own 
story.  They  reveal  the  cultivation  and  ameliora- 
tion of  domestic  life.  Their  contribution  to  the 
refinements  are  their  very  existence. 

A  history  of  any  domestic  practice  which  has 
grown  into  a  habit  marks  the  degree  of  general 
civilization,  but  the  practice  of  needlework  does 
more.  To  a  careful  student  each  small  difference 

[4] 


THE   STORY   OF  THE   NEEDLE 


in  the  art  tells  its  own  story  in  its  own  language. 
The  hammered  gold  of  Eastern  embroidery  tells 
not  only  of  the  riches  of  available  material,  but 
of  the  habit  of  personal  preparation,  instead  of  the 
mechanical.  The  little  Bible  description  of  cap- 
tured "  needlework  alike  on  both  sides  "  speaks 
unmistakably  of  the  method  of  their  stitchery,  a 
cross-stitch  of  colored  threads,  which  is  even  now 
the  only  method  of  stitch  "  alike  on  both  sides." 

It  is  an  endless  and  fascinating  story  of  the 
leisure  of  women  in  all  ages  and  circumstances, 
written  in  her  own  handwriting  of  painstaking 
needlework  and  an  estimate  of  an  art  to  which 
gold,  silver,  and  precious  stones — the  treasures  of 
the  world — were  devoted.  More  than  this,  its 
intimate  association  with  the  growth  and  well- 
being  of  family  life  makes  visible  the  point  where 
savagery  is  left  behind  and  the  decrees  of  civiliza- 
tion begin. 

I  knew  a  dear  Bible-nourished  lonely  little  maid 
who  had  constructed  for  herself  a  drama  of  Eve 
in  Eden,  playing  it  for  the  solitary  audience  of 
self  in  a  corner  of  the  garden.  She  had  brought  all 
manner  of  fruits  and  had  tied  them  to  the  fence 
palings  under  the  apple  boughs.  This  little  Eve 

[51 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

gathered  grape  leaves  and  sewed  them  carefully 
into  an  apron,  the  needle  holes  pierced  with  a 
thorn  and  held  together  by  fiber  stripped  from 
long-stemmed  plantain  leaves.  Here  she  and  her 
audience  of  self  hid  under  the  apple  boughs  and 
waited  for  the  call  of  the  Lord. 

The  long  ministry  of  the  needle  to  the  wants 
of  mankind  proves  it  to  have  been  among  the  first 
of  man's  inventions.  When  Eve  sewed  fig  leaves 
she  probably  improvised  some  implement  for  the 
process,  and  every  daughter  of  Eve,  from  Eden  to 
the  present  time,  has  been  indebted  to  that  little 
implement  for  expression  of  herself  in  love  and 
duty  and  art.  For  this  we  must  thank  the  man 
who,  the  Bible  relates,  was  "  the  father  of  all  such 
as  worked  in  metals,  and  made  needles  and  gave 
them  to  his  household."  He  is  the  first  "  handy 
man  "  mentioned  in  history — blest  be  his  memory! 

If  the  day  should  ever  come,  not,  let  us  hope, 
in  our  time  or  that  of  our  children,  when  the  manu- 
facturer shall  find  that  it  no  longer  pays  to  make 
needles,  what  value  will  attach  to  individual 
specimens!  If  they  were  only  to  be  found  in 
occasional  bric-a-brac  shops  or  in  the  collections 
of  some  far-seeing  hoarder  of  rarities,  it  would  be 

[61 


THE   STORY  OF   THE   NEEDLE 


difficult  to  overrate  the  interest  which  might 
attach  to  them.  How,  from  the  prodigal  dis- 
regard of  ages  and  the  mysteries  of  the  past,  would 
emerge,  one  after  another,  recovered  specimens, 
to  be  examined  and  judged  and  classified  and 
arranged ! 

Perhaps  collections  of  them  will  be  found  in 
future  museums  under  different  headings,  such  as: 

"Needles  of  Consolation,"  under  which  might 
come  those  which  Mary  Stuart  and  her  maids 
wrought  their  dismal  hours  into  pathetic  bits  of 
embroidery  during  the  long  days  of  captivity,  or 
the  daughter  of  the  sorrowful  Marie  Antoinette 
mended  the  dilapidations  of  the  pitiful  and  ragged 
Dauphin;  or: 

"Needles  of  Devotion,"  wielded  by  canonized 
and  uncanonized  saints  in  and  out  of  nunneries;  or: 

"Needles  of  History,"  like  those  with  which 
Matilda  stitched  the  prowess  of  William  the  Con- 
queror into  breadths  of  woven  flax. 

Possibly  there  may  arise  needle  experts  who, 
upon  microscopic  examination  and  scientific  test, 
will  refer  all  specimens  to  positive  date  and 
peculiar  function,  and  by  so  doing  let  in  floods  of 
light  upon  ancient  customs  and  habits.  It  is  idle 

2  [7] 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

to  speculate  upon  a  condition  which  does  not  yet 
exist,  for,  happily,  needles  for  actual  hand  sewing 
are  yet  in  sufficient  demand  to  allow  us  to  indulge 
in  their  purchase  quite  ungrudgingly. 

I  was  once  shown  a  needle — it  was  in  Constan- 
tinople— which  the  dark-skinned  owner  declared 
had  been  treasured  for  three  hundred  years  in  his 
family,  and  he  affirmed  it  so  positively  and  cir- 
cumstantially that  I  accepted  the  statement  as 
truth.  In  fact,  what  did  it  matter?  It  was  an 
interesting  lie  or  an  interesting  truth,  whichever 
one  might  consider  it,  and  the  needle  looked 
quite  capable  of  sustaining  another  century  or  so 
of  family  use.  Its  eye  was  a  polished  triangular 
hole  made  to  carry  strips  of  beaten  metal,  exactly 
such  as  we  read  of  in  the  Bible  as  beaten  and  cut 
into  strips  for  embroidery  upon  linen,  such  em- 
broidery, in  fact,  as  has  often  been  burned  in  order 
to  sift  the  pure  gold  from  its  ashes. 

Not  only  the  history,  but  the  poetry  and  song 
of  all  periods  are  starred  with  real  and  ideal  em- 
broideries— noble  and  beautiful  ladies,  whose  chief 
occupations  seem  to  have  been  the  medicining  of 
wounds  received  in  their  honor  or  defense,  or  the 
broidering  of  scarfs  and  sleeves  with  which  to 

[8] 


THE   STORY   OF   THE   NEEDLE 


bind  the  helmets  of  their  knights  as  they  went  forth 
to  tourney  or  to  battle.  In  these  old  chronicles 
the  knights  fought  or  made  music  with  harp  or 
voice,  and  the  women  ministered  or  made  em- 
broidery, and  so  pictured  lives  which  were  lived 
in  the  days  of  knights  and  ladies  drifted  on.  The 
sword  and  the  needle  expressed  the  duties,  the 
spirit,  and  the  essence  of  their  several  lives.  The 
men  were  militant,  the  women  domestic,  and  wher- 
ever in  castle  or  house  or  nunnery  the  lives  of 
women  were  made  safe  by  the  use  of  the  sword  the 
needle  was  devoting  itself  to  comforts  of  clothing 
for  the  poor  and  dependent,  or  luxuries  of  adorn- 
ment for  the  rich  and  powerful.  So  the  needle 
lived  on  through  all  the  civilizations  of  the  old 
world,  in  the  various  forms  which  they  developed, 
until  it  was  finally  inherited  by  pilgrims  to  a  new 
world,  and  was  brought  with  them  to  the  wilderness 
of  America. 


CHAPTER  I     &     BEGINNINGS   IN 
THE  NEW  WORLD 

THE  history  of  embroidery  in  America 
would  naturally  begin  with  the  advent  of 
the  Pilgrim  Mothers,  if  one  ignored  the 
work  of  native  Indians.  This,  however, 
would  be  unfair  to  a  primitive  art,  which  accom- 
plished, with  perfect  appropriateness  to  use  and 
remarkable  adaptation  of  circumstance  and  ma- 
terial, the  ornamentation  of  personal  apparel. 

The  porcupine  quill  embroidery  of  American 
Indian  women  is  unique  among  the  productions 
of  primitive  peoples,  and  some  of  the  dresses, 
deerskin  shirts,  and  moccasins  with  borders  and 
flying  designs  in  black,  red,  blue,  and  shining 
white  quills,  and  edged  with  fringes  hung  with 
the  teeth  and  claws  of  game,  or  with  beautiful 
small  shells,  are  as  truly  objects  of  art  as  are  many 
things  of  the  same  decorative  intent  produced 
under  the  best  conditions  of  civilization. 

To  create  beauty  with  the  very  limited  re- 
sources of  skins,  hair,  teeth,  and  quills  of  animals, 
colored  with  the  expressed  juice  of  plants,  was  a 
problem  very  successfully  solved  by  these  dwellers 


BEGINNINGS   IN   THE   NEW   WORLD 

in  the  wilderness,  and  the  results  were  practically 
and  aesthetically  valuable. 

In  the  Smithsonian  Institution  at  Washington, 
D.  C.,  there  has  happily  been  preserved  a  most 
interesting  collection  of  these  early  efforts.  The 
small  deerskin  shirts  worn  as  outer  garments  by 
the  little  Sioux  were  perhaps  among  the  most 
interesting  and  elaborate.  They  are  generally 
embroidered  with  dyed  moose  hair  and  split  quills 
of  birds  in  their  natural  colors,  large  split  quills 
or  flattened  smaller  quills  used  whole.  The  work 
has  an  embossed  effect  which  is  very  striking. 
A  coat  for  an  adult  of  Sioux  workmanship,  made 
of  calfskin  thicker  and  less  pliant  than  the  deer- 
skin ordinarily  used  for  garments,  carries  a  broad 
band  of  quill  embroidery,  broken  by  whorls  of  the 
same,  the  center  of  each  holding  a  highly  deco- 
rated tassel  made  of  narrow  strips  of  deerskin, 
bound  at  intervals  with  split  porcupine  quills. 
These  ornamental  tassels  carry  the  idea  of 
decoration  below  the  bands,  and  have  a  change- 
able and  living  effect  which  is  admirable.  In 
a  smaller  shirt,  the  whole  body  is  covered  at 
irregular  intervals  with  whorls  of  the  finest  porcu- 
pine quill  work,  edged  by  a  border  of  interlaced 

in] 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

black  and  white  quills,  finished  with  perforated 
shells.  Many  of  the  designs  are  edged  with 
narrow  zigzag  borders  of  the  split  quills  in  natural 
colors  carefully  matched  and  lapped  in  very 
exact  fashion.  There  is  one  small  shirt,  made 
with  a  decorative  border  of  tanned  ermine  skins 
in  alternate  squares  of  fur  and  beautifully  colored 
quill  embroidery,  not  one  tint  of  which  is  out  of 
harmony  with  the  soft  yellow  of  the  deerskin 
body.  The  edge  of  the  shirt  is  finished  in  very 
civilized  fashion,  with  ermine  tails,  each  pendant, 
banded  with  blue  quills,  at  alternating  heights, 
making  a  shining  zigzag  of  blue  along  the  fringe. 
The  simplicity  of  treatment  and  purity  of  color 
in  this  little  garment  were  fascinating,  and  must 
have  invested  the  small  savage  who  wore  it  with 
the  dignity  of  a  prince. 

The  mother  who  evolved  the  scheme  and  manner 
of  decoration  carried  her  bit  of  genius  in  an  un- 
civilized squaw  body,  but  had  none  the  less  a  true 
feeling  for  beauty,  and  in  this  mother  task  lifted 
the  plane  of  the  art  of  her  people  to  a  higher  level. 

The  purely  decorative  ability  which  lived  and 
flourished  before  the  advent  of  civilization  lost 
its  distinctive  simplicity  of  character  when  woven 

[12] 


2  2 

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£    £ 


BEGINNINGS    IN    THE   NEW   WORLD 

cloth  of  brilliant  red  flannel  and  the  tempting 
glamour  of  colored  glass  beads  came  into  their 
horizon,  although  they  accepted  these  new  ma- 
terials with  avidity.  Porcupine  quill  work  seems 
to  have  been  longer  practiced,  although  a  few 
headbands  of  ceremony  are  to  be  found  among 
the  tribes,  and  now  and  then  one  comes  across  a 
veritable  treasure,  an  evidence  of  long  and  unremit- 
ting toil,  which  has  been  preserved  with  veneration. 

Of  course  many  valuable  results  of  the  best 
early  embroideries  still  exist  among  the  Indians 
themselves. 

A  very  striking  feature  of  both  early  and 
late  work  is  the  fringing,  which  plays  an  im- 
portant part  in  the  decoration  of  garments.  The 
fringe  materials  were  generally  of  the  longest 
procurable  dried  moose  hair,  the  finely  cut  strips 
of  deerskin,  or,  in  some  instances,  the  tough  stems 
of  river  and  swamp  grasses  twisted,  braided  and 
interwoven  in  every  conceivable  manner,  and 
varied  along  the  depth  of  the  fringes  by  small 
perforated  shells,  teeth  of  animals,  seeds  of  pine, 
or  other  shapely  and  hard  substances  which  gave 
variety  and  added  weight.  Beads  of  bone  and 
shell  are  not  uncommon,  or  small  bits  of  hammered 

[13] 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

metal.  In  one  or  two  instances  I  have  seen  long 
deerskin  fringes  with  stained  or  painted  designs, 
emphasized  with  seeds  or  shells  at  centers  of 
circles,  or  corners  of  zigzags.  This  ingenious  use 
of  a  decorative  fringe  gave  an  effect  of  elaborate 
ornament  with  comparatively  small  labor. 

Perhaps  the  best  lesson  we  have  to  learn  from 
this  bygone  phase  of  decorative  effort  is  in  the 
possibilities  of  genuine  art,  where  scant  materials 
of  effect  are  available. 

A  thoughtful  and  exact  study  of  early  Indian 
art  gives  abundant  indication  of  the  effect  of  in- 
timacy with  the  moods  and  phenomena  of  Nature, 
incident  to  the  lives  of  an  outdoor  people. 

Many  of  the  designs  which  decorate  the 
larger  pieces,  like  shirts  and  blankets,  were 
evidently  so  inspired.  The  designs  of  lengthened 
and  unequal  zigzags  are  lightning  flashes  trans- 
lated into  embroidery;  the  lateral  lines  of  broken 
direction  are  water  waves  moving  in  masses. 
There  are  clouds  and  stars  and  moons  to  be  found 
among  them,  and  if  we  could  interpret  them  we 
might  even  find  records  of  the  sensations  with 
which  they  were  regarded. 

It  would  seem  to  argue  a  want  of  inventive 

[14] 


Courtesy  American  Museum  of  Natural  History,  New  York 


MAN'S  JACKET  OF  PORCUPINE  QUILLWORK 
Made  by  Sioux  Indians. 


Courtesy  of  A  merican  Museum  of  Natural  History,  New  York 


MAN'S  JACKET  OF  PORCUPINE  QUILLWORK 
Made  by  Plains  Indians. 


BEGINNINGS   IN   THE   NEW   WORLD 

faculty,  that  the  aboriginal  women  never  con- 
ceived the  idea  of  weaving  fibers  together  in 
textiles,  but  were  contented  with  the  skins  of 
animals  for  warmth  of  body  covering.  The  two 
alternatives  of  so  close  and  warm  a  substance  as 
tanned  skins,  or  nakedness,  seem  to  a  civilized 
mind  to  demand  some  intermediate  substance. 
This,  however,  was  not  felt  as  a  want,  at  least  not 
to  the  extent  of  inspiring  a  textile.  Perhaps  we 
should  never  have  had  the  unique  porcupine  quill 
embroidery  except  for  the  close-grained  skin 
foundation,  which  made  it  possible  and  perma- 
nent. Certainly  the  cleverness  with  which  the 
idea  of  weaving  has  been  used  in  the  evolution 
of  the  Indian  blanket  shows  that  only  the  initial 
thought  was  lacking.  The  subsequent  use  of  the 
arts  of  spinning  and  weaving,  with  the  retention 
of  the  original  idea  of  decoration  in  design  and 
coloring,  has  made  the  Indian  blanket  an  article 
of  great  commercial  value. 

Fortunately,  these  productions  are  valuable  to 
their  producers,  and  even  to  other  members  of 
the  tribes,  and  were  carefully  preserved  from 
casualties,  so  that  there  are  still  many  examples 
of  Indian  manufacture,  such  as  belts  of  wampum, 

[15) 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

and  headbands  of  ceremony,  to  be  found  among 
existing  tribes. 

These  early  specimens  are  not  only  intrinsically 
valuable,  but  give  many  a  clue  to  what  may  be 
called  the  spiritual  side  of  the  aborigines.  They 
had  not  learned  the  limits  of  representation,  and 
as  this  history  deals  with  results  of  life  and  not 
with  the  impulse  toward  expression  which  lies  at 
the  root  of  design,  we  need  not  attempt  more 
than  a  suggestion  of  some  of  the  results.  The 
unguided  impulses  of  Indian  art,  as  seen  or 
imagined  in  their  work,  lies  behind  the  work 
itself  and  can  be  read  only  by  its  materialization. 


CHAPTER  II    A     THE   CREWEL- 
WORK    OF   OUR  PURITAN 
MOTHERS 

THE  crewelwork  of  New  England  was  the 
first   ornamental   stitchery  practiced   in 
this   country   by   women   of    European 
race,  and  in  their  hands  made  its  first 
appearance  even  during  the  days  of  privation 
and  nights  of  fear  which  were  their  portion  in 
this  strange  new  world  to  which  they  had  come. 
The  seed  of  it  was  brought  by  that  winged 
creature  of  destiny,   the   Mayflower,   hidden  in 
the  folds  or  decorating  the  borders  of  the  precious 
household  linen  which  was  a  part  of  the  gear  of 
the  first  Pilgrims.     In  its  hollow  interior  there 
was  room  for  bed  dressings  and  table  napery, 
even  when  the  high-posted  bedsteads  and  tables 
which    they   had    adorned   were    abandoned,   or 
exchanged   for   peace    of  mind   and    liberty   of 
action. 

It  may  have  declared  itself  in  the  very  first 
years  of  settlement,  before  they  had  encountered 
the  savage  antagonism  of  the  aborigines,  and 
while  they  still  had  only  the  privations  incident 

[17] 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

to  pioneer  life;  or  it  may  have  been  after  the  long 
struggle  for  ascendancy  and  possession  was  over, 
and  they  could  settle  down  in  hard-won  homes. 
Upon  neighboring  or  contiguous  farms  there  they 
gradually  drew  together  the  threads  of  memory 
concerning  former  peaceful  occupations,  and  wove 
them  once  more  into  the  warp  of  daily  life.  They 
could  visit  one  another,  exchanging  domestic  ex- 
periences, or  reminiscences  of  spiritual  struggles  of 
their  own  or  of  fellow  Pilgrims,  and  old-time 
hand  occupations  would  be  a  mutual  lullaby  and 
an  exorcism  of  anxiety. 

The  real  beginning  of  embroidery  as  a  national 
art  was  probably  at  a  later  period,  for  its  previous 
practice  would  be  but  a  continuation  of  old-world 
occupations  or  diversions  of  life. 

The  devoted  mothers  of  the  American  race, 
who  sailed  the  seas  in  those  far-off  days,  might 
have  brought  some  favorite  "piece"  of  em- 
broidery among  their  most  intimate  belongings, 
wherewithal  to  while  away  the  hours  of  weary 
days  upon  the  limitless  breadths  of  ocean.  There 
would  be  intervals  of  calm  between  storms,  and 
periods  when  even  the  merest  shred  of  a  home- 
practiced  art  would  be  doubly  and  trebly  valued, 

[18] 


CREWEL  DESIGN,  drawn  and  colored,  which  dates  back  to  Colonial  times. 
In  the  possession  of  the  Dunham  family  of  Cooperstmon. 


CREWELWORK 

like  a  piece  of  heavenly  raiment  to  a  naked  and 
banished  angel. 

The  most  natural  effort  of  the  woman  standing 
in  the  midst  of  such  new  and  strenuous  conditions 
as  surrounded  the  Pilgrim  mothers  in  America, 
would  be  to  reproduce  something  which  had 
meant  peace  and  tranquillity  in  former  days.  We 
can  imagine  her,  searching  the  closely  packed 
iron-bound  chests  which  held  most  of  the  worldly 
goods  of  the  traversing  pilgrims — those  famous 
chests,  the  boards  of  which  had  been  carefully 
doweled  and  faithfully  put  together  to  resist 
outward  and  inward  pressure — packed  and  re- 
packed with  constant  misgivings  and  hopeful 
foresight.  In  those  crowded  treasure  chests  it 
was  possible  there  might  be  found  skeins  of 
crewel,  and  even  working  patterns  which  some 
hopeful  instinct  had  prompted  her  to  preserve. 

While  the  Puritan  mother  was  scheming  to 
add  embroidery  to  her  occupations,  she  did  not 
forget  to  train  each  small  maid  of  the  family  to 
the  use  of  the  needle.  Ruth  and  Peace  and 
Harmony  and  Mercy  made  their  samplers  as 
faithfully  as  though  they  were  growing  up  under 
the  shade  of  the  apple  trees  of  old  England 

119] 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

instead  of  among  the  blackened  stumps  of  newly 
cut  forests. 

So  the  old  art  survived  its  transplantation  and 
rooted  itself  in  spite  of  storms  of  terror,  and 
during  and  after  the  test  of  fire  and  blood,  and 
spread,  after  the  manner  of  art  and  knowledge, 
until  it  became  the  joy  and  comfort  of  a  new 
race,  a  vehicle  of  feminine  dexterity  and  an 
expression  of  the  creative  instinct  with  which 
in  a  greater  or  lesser  degree  we  are  all  endowed. 

We  can  easily  believe  that  stores  of  linen  and 
precious  china,  as  well  as  the  small  wheels  for  the 
spinning  of  the  flax,  could  not  be  denied  to  the 
devoted  women  who  chose  to  share  the  hard 
fortunes  of  their  Pilgrim  husbands  and  fathers. 
It  is  probable  that  in  one  form  or  another  posses- 
sions of  crewel  embroidery  were  transported  with 
them. 

1  know  of  no  well-authenticated  specimen  which 
came  in  actual  substance  in  that  elastic  vessel, 
but  undoubtedly  there  were  such,  while  many  and 
many  existed  in  the  minds  and  memories  of  the 
women  of  the  new  colony,  to  come  to  life  and 
take  on  actual  form,  color  and  substance  when 
the  days  of  their  privations  were  numbered.  If 

[201 


CREWELWORK 

such  actual  treasured  things  existed  and  were 
preserved  through  the  early  days  of  colonial  life, 
every  stitch  of  them  would  hold  within  itself 
traditions  of  tranquillity  in  a  world  where  homes 
stood,  and  fields  were  tilled  in  safety,  because  of 
the  vast  plains  of  ocean  which  lay  between  them 
and  savage  tribes. 

In  the  earliest  days  of  the  colonies  we  could 
hardly  expect  more  than  the  necessary  practice 
of  the  needle,  but  when  we  come  to  the  second 
period,  when  neighborhoods  became  towns,  and 
cabins  grew  into  more  or  less  well-equipped  farm- 
houses, Puritan  women  gladly  reverted  to  the 
accomplishments  of  pre- American  conditions.  The 
familiar  crewelwork  of  England  was  the  form  of 
needlework  which  became  popular. 

In  looking  for  materials  with  which  to  re- 
create this  art,  they  had  not  at  that  time  far  to 
seek.  Wool  and  flax  were  farm  products,  necessi- 
ties of  pioneer  life,  and  their  manufacture  into 
cloth  was  a  well-understood  domestic  art. 

Domestic  animals  had  shared  the  tremendous 
experiment  of  transplantation  of  a  fragment  of 
the  English  race,  and  had  suffered,  no  doubt, 
with  their  masters  and  owners,  the  struggles  with 

[21] 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

savages  and  unaccustomed  circumstances,  but 
they  had  survived  and  increased  "after  their 
kind."  Even  through  the  strenuous  wars  against 
their  very  existence  by  uncivilized  man,  they 
lived  and  increased.  Cows  "calved,"  and  sheep 
"lambed,"  and  wool  in  abundance  was  to  be 
had. 

The  enterprising  Puritan  woman  pulled  the 
long-fibered  straggling  lock  of  wool,  sorted  out  and 
rejected  from  the  uniform  fleeces,  carded  it  with 
her  little  hand  cards  into  yard-long  finger-sized 
rolls,  and  twisted  it  upon  her  large  wheel  spindle, 
producing  much  such  thread  as  an  Italian  peasant 
woman  spins  upon  her  distaff  to-day  as  she  walks 
upon  the  shore  at  Baise. 

If  the  pioneer  was  a  natural  copyist,  she  doubled 
and  twisted  it,  to  make  it  in  the  exact  fashion 
of  the  English  crewel;  if  adventurous  and  inde- 
pendent, she  worked  it  single  threaded.  This 
yarn  had  all  the  pliant  qualities  necessary  for 
embroidery,  and  was  in  fact  uncolored  crewel. 

So,  also,  the  production  of  flax  thread,  when  the 
crop  of  flax  was  grown,  and  the  long  stems  had 
struggled  upward  to  their  greatest  heights,  and 
finished  themselves  in  a  cloud  of  multitudinous 

1221 


w  fc_s 

HfflS 


i|§ 
•  •  jl 


ff 

no  (t 

* 


CREWELWORK 

blue  flax  flowers,  beautiful  enough  to  be  grown 
for  beauty  alone,  they  pulled  and  made  into 
slender  bundles,  and  laid  under  the  current  of  the 
brook  which  neighbored  most  pioneer  houses,  until 
the  thready  fibers  could  be  washed  and  scraped 
from  the  vegetable  outer  coat,  the  perishable 
parts  of  their  composition,  and  combed  into  sepa- 
rateness.  Then  it  was  ready  for  the  small  flax 
wheel  of  the  housewife.  Every  woman  had 
both  wool  wheel  and  flax  wheel,  the  latter  of  all 
grades  of  beauty,  from  those  made  for  the  use 
of  queens  and  ladies  of  high  degree — royal  for 
elaboration — to  the  modest  ashen  wheel,  derived 
from  a  long  line  of  industrious  and  careful  fore- 
mothers,  or  copied  by  the  clever  Pilgrim  fathers, 
from  some  adventurous  wheel  which  had  made  the 
long  voyage  from  civilized  Holland  to  uncivilized 
America. 

For  color,  the  simplest  and  most  at  hand  ex- 
pedient was  a  dip  in  the  universal  indigo  tub, 
which  waited  in  every  "back  shed"  of  the  Puritan 
homestead.  One  single  dip  in  its  black-looking 
depths  and  the  skein  of  spun  lamb's  wool  acquired 
a  tint  like  the  blue  of  the  sky.  Immersion  of  a 
day  and  night  gave  an  indelible  stain  of  a  darker 

3  [23] 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

blue,  and  a  week's  repose  at  the  bottom  of  the 
pot  made  the  wool  as  dark  in  tint  as  the  indigo 
itself.  For  variety  in  her  blues,  the  enterprising 
housewife  used  the  sunburned  "taglocks"  which 
were  too  hopelessly  yellow  for  webs  of  white  wool 
weaving,  and  gave  them  a  short  immersion  in  the 
tub,  with  the  result  of  a  beautiful  blue-green, 
tinged  through  and  through  with  a  sunny  luster, 
and  this  color  was  sun-fast  and  water-fast,  capable 
of  holding  its  tint  for  a  century. 

We  know  how  knots  of  living  wool  grow  golden 
by  dragging  through  dew  and  lying  in  the  sun, 
and  how  the  ladies  of  Venice  sat  upon  the  roofs 
of  their  palaces  with  locks  outspread  upon  the 
encircling  brims  of  crownless  hats,  in  order  to 
capture  the  true  Venetian  tint  of  hair.  We  do 
not  know  by  what  alchemy  the  sun  silvers  a  web 
spread  out  to  whiten,  and  yet  gilds  the  human 
tresses  of  ladies  and  yellows  the  "taglocks"  of 
sheep.  Chemists  may  be  able  to  explain,  but 
simple  woman,  unversed  in  the  mysteries  of 
chemistry,  cannot.  Whatever  may  have  been 
the  science  of  it,  this  golden  hue  added  to  medium 
and  dark  blue  a  triad  of  shades,  which  proved  to 
be  most  effective  when  placed  upon  pure  white 

[24] 


CREWELWORK 

of  bleached  linen,  or  the  gray-cream  of  the  un- 
bleached web. 

The  color  seekers  soon  learned  that  every  in- 
delible stain  was  a  dye,  and  if  little  God-fearing 
Thomas  came  home  with  a  stain  of  ineffaceable 
green  or  brown  on  the  knees  of  his  diminutive 
tow  breeches,  the  mother  carefully  investigated 
the  character  of  it,  and  if  it  was  unmoved  by  the 
persuasive  influence  of  "soft  soap  and  sun,"  she 
added  it  to  a  list  which  meant  knowledge.  It  is 
to  be  hoped  that  this  was  often  considered  an 
equivalent  for  the  "trouncing"  which  was  the 
common  penalty  of  accident  or  inadvertence 
suffered  by  the  Puritan  child.  In  truth,  Solomon's 
unwholesome  caution,  "Spare  the  rod  and  spoil 
the  child,"  was  all  too  strictly  observed  in  those 
conscience-ridden  Puritan  days.  I  had  a  child's 
lively  disapproval  of  Solomon,  since  the  curse  of 
his  sarcastic  comment  came  down  with  the  Puritan 
strain  in  my  own  blood,  and  I  have  a  smarting 
recollection  of  it. 

God-fearing  Thomas  and  his  brothers  added  to 
their  mother's  artistic  equipment  not  only  a  list 
of  variously  shaded  brown  from  the  bark  of  the 
black  walnut  tree,  and  of  yellows  from  the  leaves 

[25] 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

and  twigs  of  the  sumac  and  wild  cherry,  but 
numberless  others.  She  was  an  untiring  color 
hunter,  an  experimenter  with  the  juices  of  plants 
and  flowers  and  berries,  and  with  every  unwash- 
outable  stain.  She  set  herself  to  the  exciting 
task  of  repetition  and  variation.  She  tried  the 
velvet  shell  of  young  butternuts  upon  threads  of 
her  white  wool,  and  found  a  spring  green,  and  if 
she  spread  over  it  a  thinnest  wash  of  hemlock 
bark,  they  were  olive,  and  if  she  dipped  them  in 
mitigated  indigo,  lo!  they  were  of  the  green  of 
sea  hollows.  The  butternut  in  all  stages  of  its 
growth,  from  the  smallest  and  greenest  to  the 
rusty  black  of  the  ripe  ones,  and  the  blackest 
black  of  the  dried  shell,  was  a  mine  of  varied 
color;  and  the  brass  kettle  of  from  ten  to  twenty 
quarts  capacity,  which  served  so  many  purposes 
in  domestic  life,  could  be  tranquilly  carrying  out 
some  of  her  propositions  in  the  corner  of  the 
wide  chimney  while  dinner  was  cooking,  or  in  the 
ashes  of  the  burned-out  embers  while  the  house- 
hold slept. 

It  was  interesting  and  skillful  work  to  extract 
these  colors,  and  the  emulation  of  it  and  the 
glory  of  producing  a  new  one  was  not  without  its 

[26] 


QUILTED  COVERLET  made  by  Ann  Gurnee. 


Courtesy    of   Bergen    County    Historical    Society, 
Hackcnsack,    N.    J. 

HOMESPUN  WOOLEN  BLANKET  with 
King  George's  Crown  embroidered  with  home- 
dyed  blue  yarn  in  the  corner.  From  the  Bur- 
dette  home  at  Fort  Lee.  N.  J..  where  Wash- 
ington was  entertained. 


p 


<  i»r/C5.v  <•/  Ii,r^>i  C<:uily  Hi^:-ri.<:!  .!>•>.  iY:.v.  //JL /:.••:- 
iocfe.  AT.  /. 

CHEROKEE  ROSE  BLANKET,  made  about 
1830  of  homespun  wool  with  "Indian  Rose"  de- 
sign about  nineteen  inches  in  diameter  worked  in 
the  corners  in  home-dyed  yarns  of  black .  red .  yellow, 
and  dark  green.  From  the  Westervelt  collection. 


CREWELWORK 

excitement.  There  was  a  certain  "fast  pink  " 
which  was  the  secret  of  one  ingenious  ungenerous 
Puritan  woman,  who  kept  the  secret  of  the  dye, 
when  rose  pink  was  the  unattainable  want  of 
feminine  New  England.  She  died  without  reveal- 
ing it,  and  as  in  those  days  there  were  no  chemists 
to  boil  up  her  rags  and  test  them  for  the  secret, 
the  "Windham  pink,"  so  said  my  grandmother, 
"made  people  sorry  for  her  death,  although  she 
did  not  deserve  it."  This  little  neighborly  fling 
passed  down  two  generations  before  it  came  to 
me  from  the  later  days  of  the  colony. 

Yellows  of  different  complexions  were  dis- 
covered in  mayweed,  goldenrod  and  sumac,  and 
the  little-girl  Faiths  and  Hopes  and  Harmonys 
came  in  with  fingers  pink  from  the  handling  of 
pokeberries  and  purple  from  blackberry  stain, 
tempting  the  sight  with  evanescent  dyes  which 
would  not  keep  their  color  even  when  stayed  with 
alum  and  fortified  with  salt.  All  this  made 
Mistress  Windham's  memory  the  more  sad.  A 
good  reliable  rose  red  was  always  wanting.  Mad- 
der could  be  purchased,  for  it  was  raised  in  the 
Southern  colonies,  but  the  madder  was  a  brown 
red.  Finally  some  enterprising  merchantman 

[27] 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

introduced  cochineal,  and  the  vacuum  was  filled. 
With  a  judicious  addition  of  logwood,  rose  red, 
wine  red  and  deep  claret  were  achieved. 

The  dye  of  dyes  was  indigo,  for  the  blue  of 
heaven,  or  the  paler  blue  of  snow  shadows,  to  a 
blue  which  was  black  or  a  black  which  was  blue, 
was  within  its  capacity.  And  the  convenience  of 
it!  The  indigo  tub  was  everywhere  an  adjunct 
to  all  home  manufactures.  It  dyed  the  yarn  for 
the  universal  knitting,  and  the  wool  which  was 
a  part  of  the  blue-gray  homespun  for  the  wear 
of  the  men  of  the  household.  "  One-third  of  white 
wool,  one-third  of  indigo-dyed  wool,  and  one- 
third  of  black  sheep's  wool,"  was  the  formula 
for  this  universal  texture.  Perhaps  it  was  not 
too  much  to  say  that  the  gray  days  of  the  Pilgrim 
mother's  life  were  enriched  by  this  royal  color. 

The  soft  yarns,  carefully  spun  from  selected 
wool,  took  kindly  to  the  natural  dyes,  and  our 
friend,  the  Puritan  housewife,  soon  found  herself 
in  possession  of  a  stock  of  home-manufactured 
material,  soft  and  flexible  in  quality,  and  quite 
as  good  in  color  as  that  of  the  lamented  English 
crewels.  The  homespun  and  woven  linens  with 
which  her  chests  were  stocked  were  exactly  the 

[281 


CREWELWORK 

ground  for  decorative  needlework  of  the  kind 
which  she  had  known  in  her  English  childhood, 
long  before  questions  of  conscience  had  come  to 
trouble  her,  or  the  boy  who  had  grown  up  to  be 
her  husband  had  been  wakened  from  a  comfort- 
able existence  by  the  cat  -o'-  nine  -tails  of  con- 
science, and  sent  across  the  sea  to  stifle  his  doubts 
in  fighting  savagery. 

Probably  the  Puritan  mother  could  stop  think- 
ing for  a  while  about  the  training  of  Thomas  and 
Peace  and  Harmony,  and  the  rest  of  the  dozen 
and  a  half  of  children  which  were  the  allotted 
portion  of  every  Puritan  wife,  while  she  selected 
out  intervals  of  her  long  busy  days,  as  one  selects 
out  bits  of  color  from  bundles  of  uninteresting 
patches,  and  devoted  them  to  absolutely  super- 
fluous needlework. 

What  a  joy  it  must  have  been  to  ponder 
whether  she  should  use  deep  pink  or  celestial  blue 
for  the  flowers  of  her  pattern,  instead  of  re- 
membering how  red  poor  baby  Thomas's  little 
cushions  of  flesh  had  grown  under  the  smart 
slaps  of  her  corset  board  when  he  overcame  his 
sister  Faith  in  a  fair  fight  about  nothing,  and 
what  a  relief  the  making  of  crewel  roses  must 

1291 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

have  been  from  the  doubts  and  cares  of  a  con- 
stantly increasing  family! 

She  sorted  out  her  colors,  three  shades  of 
green,  three  of  cochineal  red,  two  of  madder — one 
of  them  a  real  salmon  color — numberless  shades 
of  indigo,  yellows  and  oranges  and  browns  in 
goodly  bunches,  ready  for  the  long  stretches  of 
fair  solid  white  linen  split  into  valances  or  sewed 
into  a  counterpane.  Truly  she  was  a  happy 
woman,  and  she  would  show  Mistress  Schuyler, 
with  her  endless  "blue-and-white,"  what  she 
could  do  with  her  colors!  Then  she  had  a  mis- 
giving, and  reflected  for  a  moment  on  the  un- 
regeneracy  of  the  human  soul,  and  that  poor 
Mistress  Schuyler's  quiet  airs  of  superiority 
really  came  from  her  Dutch  blood,  for  her  mother 
was  an  English  Puritan  who  had  married  a 
Hollander,  and  her  own  husband  revealed  to  her 
in  the  dead  of  night,  when  all  hearts  are  opened, 
his  belief  that  "Brother  Schuyler  had  been  moved 
to  emigrate  much  more  by  greed  of  profitable 
trade  with  the  savages  than  by  longings  for 
liberty  of  conscience." 

She  went  back  to  her  "pattern,"  which  she 
just  now  remembered  had  been  lent  her  by  poor 

[30] 


CREWELWORK 

Mistress  Schuyler,  and  was  soon  absorbed  in 
making  long  lines  of  pin  pricks  along  the  out- 
lines of  the  pattern,  so  that  she  could  sift 
powdered  charcoal  through  and  catch  the  shapes 
of  leaves  and  curves  on  her  fair  white  linen. 

Her  foot  was  on  the  rocker  of  the  cradle  all  the 
time,  and  the  last  baby  was  asleep  in  it.  The 
hooded  cherry  cradle  which  had  rocked  the  three 
girls  and  four  boys,  counting  the  wee  velvet- 
scalped  Jonathan,  against  whose  coming  the 
cradle  had  been  polished  with  rottenstone  and 
whale  oil  until  it  shone  like  mahogany. 

Should  the  roses  of  the  pattern  be  red  or  pink? 
and  the  columbines  blue  or  purple?  She  could 
make  a  beautiful  purple  by  steeping  the  sugar 
paper  which  wrapped  her  precious  cone  of  West 
Indian  "loaf  sugar,"  and  sugar-paper  purple  was 
reasonably  fast.  So  ran  the  thoughts  of  the 
dear,  straight-featured  Puritan  wife  as  she  sorted 
her  colors  and  worked  her  pattern. 

At  this  period  of  her  experience  of  the  new  life 
of  the  colonies,  the  chief  end  of  her  embroidery 
was  to  help  in  creating  a  civilized  home,  to  add 
to  what  had  been  built  simply  for  shelter  and 
protection,  some  of  the  features  which  lived  and 

[31] 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

grew  only  in  the  atmosphere  of  safety  and  con- 
tent. Hospitality  was  one  of  the  features  of 
New  England  life,  and  the  first  addition  to  the 
family  shelter  was  a  bedroom,  which  bore  the  title 
of  the  "best  bedroom,"  and  a  tall  four-post  bed, 
which  was  the  "best  bed."  The  adornment  of 
this  holy  altar  of  friendship  was  an  urgent  duty. 

When  I  began  this  allusion  to  the  "best  bed- 
room," I  left  the  housewife  sorting  her  tinted 
crewels  for  its  adornment,  and  she  still  sat, 
happily  cutting  the  beautiful  homespun  linen  into 
lengths  for  the  two  bed  valances,  the  one  to 
hang  from  the  upper  frame  which  surrounded  the 
top  of  her  four-post  bedstead,  and  the  other,  which 
hung  from  the  bed  frame  itself,  and  reached  the 
floor,  hiding  the  dark  space  beneath  the  bed. 
The  "high-post  bedstead"  had  long  groups  of 
smooth  flutes  in  the  upward  course  of  its  posts, 
and  no  footboard,  a  plain-sawed  headboard  and 
smooth  headposts.  There  must  be  a  long  curtain 
at  the  head  of  the  bed,  which  would  hide  both 
headboard  and  plain  headposts,  and  this  curtain 
she  meant  should  have  a  wide  border  of  crewel- 
work  at  the  top  and  bunches  of  flowers  scattered 
at  intervals  on  its  surface. 

[32] 


BED  SET.  Keturah  Baldwin  pattern,  designed,  dyed,  and  worked  by  The  Deerfield  Society 
of  Blue  and  White  Needlework,  Deerfield.  Mass. 


Courtesy  of  Colonial  Rojms,  John  \\'<ina  maker.  New  York 
BED  COVERS  worked  in  candle  wicking. 


CREWELWORK 

None  of  Mistress  Schuyler's  "blue-and- white" 
for  her!  It  should  cany  every  color  she  could 
muster,  and  the  upper  valance  should  have  the 
same  border  as  the  head  curtain.  The  lower 
valance  would  not  need  it,  for  the  counterpane 
would  hang  well  over,  and  she  meant  somehow 
to  bend  the  border  design  into  a  wreath  and 
work  it  in  the  center  of  the  counterpane,  and 
double-knot  a  fringe  to  go  entirely  around  it,  the 
same  as  that  which  should  edge  the  upper  valance. 

It  was  a  luxurious  bed  dressing  when  it  was 
finished,  and  nothing  in  it  of  material  to  dif- 
ferentiate it  from  the  embroideries  which  were 
being  done  in  England  at  the  very  time.  There 
were  no  original  features  of  design  or  arrange- 
ment. The  close-lapping  stitches  were  set  in 
exactly  the  same  fashion,  and,  considering  the 
absolute  necessity  of  growing  and  manufacturing 
all  the  materials,  it  was  a  wonderful  performance. 

It  was  not  alone  bed  hangings  which  were 
subjects  of  New  England  crewelwork;  there  were 
mantel  valances,  which  covered  the  plain  wooden 
mantels  and  hung  at  a  safe  distance  above  the 
generous  household  fires.  These  were  wrought 
with  borders  of  crewelwork,  and  finished  with 

1331 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

elaborate  thread  and  crewel  fringes.  They  were 
knotted  into  diamond-shaped  openings,  above  the 
fringes,  three  or  four  rows  of  them,  the  more  the 
better,  for  in  the  general  simplicity  of  furnishing, 
these  things  were  of  value.  Then  there  were 
table  covers  and  stand  covers  and  wall  pockets 
of  various  shapes  and  designs,  and,  in  short,  wher- 
ever the  housewife  could  legitimately  introduce 
color  and  ornamentation,  crewelwork  made  its 
appearance. 

In  the  very  infancy  of  the  art  of  embroidery  in 
America,  the  primitive  needlewoman  was  pos- 
sessed of  means  and  materials  which  fill  the 
embroiderers  of  our  rich  later  days  with  envy. 
Homespun  linen  is  no  longer  to  be  had,  and 
dyes  are  no  longer  the  pure,  simple,  hold-fast 
juices  which  certain  plants  draw  from  the  ground; 
and  try  as  we  may  to  emulate  or  imitate  the  old 
embroidered  valances  which  hung  from  the  testers 
of  the  high-post  bedsteads  and  concealed  the 
dark  cavities  beneath,  and  the  coverlet  be- 
sprinkled with  bunches  of  impossible  flowers  done 
in  home-concocted  shades  of  color  upon  heavy 
snow-white  linen,  we  fall  far  short  of  the  intrinsic 
merits  of  those  early  hangings. 

[34] 


CREWELWORK 

There  are  many  survivals  of  these  embroideries 
in  New  England  families,  who  reverence  all  that 
pertains  to  the  lives  of  their  founders.  Bed 
hangings  had  less  daily  wear  and  friction  than 
pertained  to  other  articles  of  decorative  use,  and 
generally  maintained  a  healthy  existence  until 
they  ceased  to  be  things  of  custom  or  fashion. 
When  this  time  came  they  were  folded  away  with 
other  treasures  of  household  stuffs,  in  the  reserved 
linen  chest,  whence  they  occasionally  emerge  to 
tell  tales  of  earlier  days  and  compare  themselves 
with  the  mixed  specimens  of  needlework  art 
which  have  succeeded  them,  but  cannot  be 
properly  called  their  descendants. 

The  possession  of  a  good  piece  of  old  crewel- 
work,  done  in  this  country,  is  as  strong  a  proof  of 
respectable  ancestry  as  a  patent  of  nobility,  since 
no  one  in  the  busy  early  colonial  days  had  time  for 
such  work  save  those  whose  abundant  leisure 
was  secured  by  ample  means  and  liberal  surround- 
ings. The  incessant  social  and  intellectual  activity 
demanded  by  modern  conditions  of  life  was  un- 
called for.  No  woman,  be  she  gentle  or  simple, 
had  stepped  from  the  peaceful  obscurity  of  home 
into  the  field  of  the  world  to  war  for  its  prizes 

[35] 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

or  rewards.  If  the  man  to  whom  she  belonged 
failed  to  win  bread  or  renown,  the  women  who 
were  bound  in  his  family  starved  for  the  one  or 
lived  without  the  luster  of  the  other. 

I  have  shown  that  even  in  the  early  days  of 
flax  growing  and  indigo  dyeing  the  New  England 
farmer's  wife  had  come  into  her  heritage,  not 
only  of  materials,  but  of  the  implements  of  manu- 
facture. She  had  the  small  flax  wheel  which 
dwelt  in  the  keeping  room,  where  she  could  sit 
and  spin  like  a  lady  of  place  and  condition,  and 
the  large  woolen  wheel  standing  in  the  mote- 
laden  air  of  the  garret,  through  which  she  walked 
up  and  down  as  she  twisted  the  yarn. 

Later,  the  colonial  dame,  if  she  belonged  to  the 
prosperous  class — for  there  were  classes,  even  in 
the  beginning  of  colonial  life — had  her  beauti- 
fully shaped  mahogany  linen  wheel,  made  by  the 
skillful  artificers  of  England  or  Holland,  more 
beautiful  perhaps,  but  not  more  capable  than 
that  of  the  farm  wife,  whittled  and  sandpapered 
into  smoothness  by  her  husband  or  sons,  and 
both  were  used  with  the  same  result. 

The  pioneer  woodworker  had  a  lively  apprecia- 
tion of  the  new  woods  of  the  new  country,  and 

136] 


CREWELWORK 

made  free  use  of  the  abundant  wild  cherry  for  the 
furniture  called  for  by  the  growing  prosperity  of 
the  settlements,  its  close  grain  and  warm  color 
giving  it  the  preference  over  other  native  woods, 
excepting  always  the  curly  and  bird's-eye  maple, 
which  were  novelites  to  the  imported  artisan. 

I  remember  that  "curly  maple"  was  a  much 
prized  wood  in  my  own  childhood,  and  that  after 
carefully  searching  for  the  outward  marks  of  it 
among  the  trees  of  the  farm,  I  asked  about  the 
shape  of  its  leaves  and  the  color  of  its  bark,  so 
that  I  might  know  it — for  children  were  supposed 
to  know  species  of  trees  by  sight  in  my  childhood. 
"Why,"  said  my  mother,  "it  looks  like  any  other 
maple  tree  on  the  outside;  it  is  only  that  the  wood 
is  curly,  just  as  some  children  have  curly  hair." 
Even  now,  after  all  these  years,  a  plane  of  curly 
maple  suggests  the  curly  hair  of  some  child 
beloved  of  nature. 

The  beautiful  curly,  spotted  and  satiny  maple 
wood  was,  however,  "out  of  fashion"  when  the 
roving  shipmasters  began  to  bring  in  logs  of 
Santo  Domingo  mahogany  in  the  holds  of  their  far- 
wandering  barks,  and  the  cabinetmakers  to  cut 
beautiful  shapes  of  sideboards,  and  curving  legs 

137] 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

and  backs  of  chairs,  as  well  as  the  tall  carved 
headposts  and  the  head  and  footboards  of  luxuri- 
ous beds  from  them.  It  was  not  only  that  they 
were  a  repetition  of  English  luxury,  but  that 
they  made  more  of  themselves  in  plain  white 
interiors,  by  reason  of  insistent  color,  than  the 
blond  sisterhood  of  maples  could  do.  Cherry, 
which  shared  in  a  degree  its  depth  of  color,  held 
its  world  for  a  longer  period,  but.no  wood  could 
withstand  the  magnificence  of  pure  mahogany  red, 
with  the  story  of  its  vegetable  life  written  along 
its  planes  in  lines  and  waves,  deepening  into 
darks,  and  lightening  into  ocher  and  gold  along 
its  surfaces. 

If  the  cabinetry  of  New  England  is  a  digression, 
it  is  perhaps  excusable  on  the  ground  of  its  close 
connection  with  the  crewel  work  of  New  England, 
of  which  we  are  treating,  and  to  which  we  shall 
have  something  of  a  sense  of  novelty  in  return- 
ing, since  at  least  the  complexion  of  our  colonial 
embroidery  has  experienced  a  change. 

So,  in  spite  of  the  success  of  the  early  Puritan 
woman  in  producing  tints  necessary  to  the  various 
needs  of  colored  crewelwork,  the  supremacy  of 
indigo  as  a  dye  led  to  a  lasting  fashion  of  em- 

[38] 


CREWELWORK 

broidery  known  as  "blue-and-white."  It  was  the 
assertion  of  absolute  and  tried  merit  in  materials 
which  led  to  its  success.  We  sometimes  see  this 
emergence  of  persistent  goodness  in  instances  of 
some  human  career,  where  indefatigable  integrity 
outruns  the  glamour  of  personal  gift.  This  was  the 
fortune  of  the  "  blue-and-white,"  which  not  only 
created  a  style,  but  has  achieved  persistence  and 
has  broken  out  in  revivals  all  along  the  history  of 
American  embroidery.  It  has  been  somewhat 
identified  with  domestic  weaving,  for  the  loom  has 
always  been  a  member  of  the  New  England 
family,  the  great  home-built  loom,  standing  in 
the  far  end  of  the  kitchen,  capable  of  divers 
miracles  of  creation  between  dawn  and  sunset. 

On  this  much-to-be-prized  background  of  home- 
spun linen  the  different  shades  of  indigo  blue 
could  be,  and  were,  very  effectively  used,  and 
it  is  worthy  of  note  that  it  repeated  the  simple 
contrasts  of  the  Canton  china  or  the  "blue 
Canton"  which  were  the  prized  gifts  brought  to 
their  families  by  the  returning  New  England 
seamen  in  the  profitable  "India  trade,"  which 
soon  became  a  commercial  fact. 

"Blue-and-white"  had  at  first  been  evolved  by 

4  139] 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

tight-bound  circumstances.  Excellent  practice  in 
shades  of  blue  had  given  it  a  certified  place  in  the 
embroidery  art  of  America,  but  we  do  not  find  it 
in  collections  of  old  English  embroidery.  It  is 
one  of  the  small  monuments  which  mark  the 
path  of  the  woman  colonist,  narrowed  by  circum- 
stances, which  created  a  recognized  style.  It  is 
not  to  be  wondered  at  that  blue-and-white  crewel- 
work  made  a  place  for  itself  in  the  history  of 
embroidery  which  was  a  permanent  one.  The 
circumstances  of  Puritan  life  being  so  simple  and 
direct  would  induce  a  corresponding  simplicity 
of  taste,  and  simplicity  is  apt  to  seize  upon  first 
principles. 

Every  colorist  knows  that  strong  but  peaceful 
contrast  is  one  of  the  first  laws  of  color  arrange- 
ment, and  the  unconscious  yoking  of  white  and 
blue  placed  one  of  the  strongest  color  notes 
against  unprotesting  and  receptive  white.  This 
made  a  new  manner  or  style  of  embroidery.  Its 
permanence  may  have  been  influenced  by  the 
art  of  one  of  the  oldest  peoples  of  the  world,  and 
as  we  have  said,  the  prevalence  of  Canton 
china  upon  the  dressers  and  filling  the  mantel 
closets  and  serving  the  tables  of  the  rich,  was 

[40] 


CREWELWORK 

beginning  to  appear  in  all  houses  of  growing 
prosperity,  even  where  pewter  ware  and  dishes 
carved  from  wood  still  held  the  place  of  actual 
service. 

The  Puritan  housewife  could  arrange  her  grades 
of  blue  according  to  the  Chinese  colors  of  this 
oldest  domestic  art  of  the  world,  and  be  corre- 
spondingly happy  in  the  result.  Chinese  design, 
however,  had  no  influence  in  the  growing  practice 
of  embroidery,  and  here  also  an  instinctive  law 
prevailed.  She  recognized  that  even  the  highly 
artificial  landscape  art  of  her  idolized  plates 
would  not  suit  the  flexible  and  broken  sur- 
faces of  her  equally  cherished  linen,  or  the 
surroundings  of  her  life. 

It  was  small  worder  that  this  became  a  favorite 
style  of  embroidery  and  has  in  it  the  seeds  of 
permanence.  A  table  setting  of  snow-white  or 
cream-white  homespun,  scalloped  and  embroidered 
in  lines  of  blue  crewels,  shining  with  the  precious 
Canton  blue,  was,  and  would  be  even  at  this  day, 
a  thing  to  admire. 

The  first  deviation  from  the  habitual  crewel- 
work  is  to  be  found  in  the  "blue-and- white," 
for  although  the  same  stitch  was  employed,  it 

[41] 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

was  more  often  in  outline  than  solid.  The  de- 
signs were  sketches  instead  of  "patterns"  as 
had  formerly  been  the  case.  Although  this 
variety  of  work  comes  under  the  head  of  colonial 
crewelwork,  there  was  in  it  the  beginning  of  the 
changes  and  variety  effected  by  differing  circum- 
stances and  influences — those  vital  circumstances 
which  leave  their  traces  constantly  along  the 
history  of  needlework.  It  was  owing  to  various 
reasons  that  outline  embroidery  largely  took  the 
place  of  solid  crewelwork. 

The  question  of  design  must  have  been  a  rather 
difficult  one,  as  there  were  no  designs,  and  almost 
no  sources  of  design  for  needlework,  and  at  this 
stage  of  the  art  in  New  England  original  design 
seems  not  to  have  suggested  itself.  It  would 
certainly  have  been  quite  natural  to  have  copied 
pine  trees  and  broken  outlines  of  hills,  but  as  this 
class  of  embroidery  was  almost  entirely  used  for 
hangings  and  decorative  furnishings,  the  Pilgrim 
mothers  seem  to  have  had  an  instinctive  sense 
that  such  design  was  incongruous.  Consequently 
they  copied  English  models.  We  find  designs  of 
crewelwork  of  the  period  in  English  museums 
identically  the  same  as  in  the  New  England 

[42] 


CREWELWORK 

work,  thorned  roses  and  voluminously  doubled 
pinks,  held  together  in  borders  of  long  curved 
lines  or  scattered  at  regular  intervals  in  groups 
and  bunches. 

My  grandmother  explained  to  me  in  that  long- 
ago  period,  where  her  great  age  and  my  inquisitive 
youth  met  and  exchanged  our  several  and  indi- 
vidual surplus  of  thought  and  talk,  that  to  a 
certain  extent  ladies  of  colonial  days  copied 
many  of  their  designs  from  what  were  called 
India  chintzes.  These  chintzes  seem  to  have 
been  the  intermediate  wear  between  homespun 
of  either  flax  or  wool  and  the  creamy  satins  or 
the  thick  "paduasoy,"  the  more  flexible  "lute- 
string" silks,  worn  by  great  ladies  of  the  period, 
and  the  wrought  India  muslins  for  less  conven- 
tional occasions.  India  chintzes  were  printed 
upon  white  or  tinted  grounds  of  hand -spun 
cotton,  in  colors  so  generously  full  of  substance 
as  to  have  almost  the  effect  of  brocaded  stuffs, 
and  adaptations  from  their  designs  were  suitable 
for  embroidery.  I  remember  the  three-cornered 
and  square  bits  of  India  chintz  which  my  grand- 
mother showed  me  in  long-preserved  "  house- 
wives,'* or  "huz-ifs,"  as  she  called  them.  They 

143] 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

were  lengths  of  domestic  linen  on  which  small 
squares  or  triangles  of  chintz  were  sewn,  making 
a  series  of  small  pockets,  each  one  stuffed  with 
convenient  threads  or  bits  of  colored  sewing 
silks,  or  needle  and  thimble.  These  were  pinned 
at  the  belt  of  the  active  housewife,  and  hung 
swaying  against  her  skirts  if  she  rose  from  her 
sewing,  or  were  conveniently  at  hand  if  she  sat 
patching  or  embroidering.  I  remember  that  some 
of  my  grandmother's  "huz-ifs"  still  held  threads 
of  different  colored  crewels  wound  on  bits  of  card- 
board, and  any  embroiderer  might  envy  the 
convenience  of  such  holders. 

I  do  not  see,  in  fact,  why  there  should  not  be  a 
revival  of  "huz-ifs,"  a  pleasant  new  fashion, 
founded  upon  the  old,  holding  in  harmonious 
variety  all  the  wonders  of  modern  manufacture, 
as  well  as  making  mementos  of  former  gowns  of 
one's  own  and  of  one's  friends.  They  might  be 
studied  gradations  of  color  and  design,  and  be 
enriched  by  harmonious  bindings.  If  my  dwin- 
dling time  holds  out,  perhaps  I  shall  institute  or 
assist  at  such  a  renewal  of  old  conveniences,  in 
spite  of  sharp  contrast  of  purposes,  adding  to 
home  costume  a  grace  of  pendent  color. 

[44] 


CREWELWORK 

I  was  talking  of  design,  when  "huz-ifs"  in- 
truded, and  was  saying  that  at  the  period  when 
"blue-and-white"  took  on  the  "outline  practice" 
design  was  a  difficult  question;  indeed,  it  is  always 
a  difficult  question  for  embroiderers.  It  is  so 
important  a  part  or  quality  of  the  art  of  em- 
broidery. In  fact,  it  is  the  business  of  the  success- 
ful embroiderer  to  know  as  much  about  design 
as  she  must  about  stitchery  and  color. 

After  the  advent  of  "blue-and-white,"  embroid- 
ery took  on  many  different  features.  Curiously 
enough,  when  it  was  confined  to  decorative  uses, 
its  character  immediately  changed.  Crewelwork 
of  the  period  was  not  given  to  hangings  and 
furniture,  but  to  clothing.  An  embroidered  apron 
became  of  much  more  importance  than  a  bed 
valance  or  counterpane.  The  young  girl  began 
by  embroidering  her  school  aprons  with  borders 
of  forget-me-nots  and  mullein  pinks,  in  colored 
crewels. 

I  remember  seeing  among  my  grandmother's 
savings  an  apron  of  gray  unbleached  linen, 
quite  dark  in  color,  with  a  border  of  single  pinks 
entirely  around  it.  The  design  had  evidently 
been  drawn  from  the  flower  itself,  and  the  whole 

[45] 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

performance  was  essentially  different  from  that 
of  a  slightly  earlier  period.  The  materials  of 
homespun  linen  and  home-dyed  crewels  were 
the  same.  The  thing  which  was  different  and 
showed  either  a  cropping-out  of  original  thought 
or  a  bias  toward  the  style  of  embroidery  lately 
introduced  by  the  famous  school  of  Bethlehem, 
Pennsylvania,  was  an  over-and-over  stitch  instead 
of  the  old  crewel  method.  This  over-and-over 
stitch  was  apparent  in  all  crewel  embroidery 
devoted  to  personal  wear,  but  was  never  found 
in  articles  used  for  house  or  decorative  purposes. 
It  was  certainly  a  proper  distinction,  as  the  fiat 
of  crewel  was  not  capable  of  shadow  and  was 
more  inherently  a  part  of  the  textile,  as  much  so, 
indeed,  as  a  stamped  or  woven  decoration  would 
have  been. 

It  was  not  long  before  the  over-and-over  stitch 
demanded  silks  and  flosses  instead  of  crewels  for 
its  exercise,  and  silk  or  satin  for  the  background 
of  its  exploits.  There  were  satin  bags  covered 
with  the  most  delicate  stitchery,  and  black  silk 
aprons  with  wreaths  of  myrtle  done  with  silks  or 
flosses,  and,  finally,  satin  pelerines  exquisitely  em- 
broidered in  designs  of  carefully  shaded  roses. 

[46] 


CREWEL  WORK 

Although  nothing  remarkable  or  epoch-making 
happened  in  the  art  of  embroidery,  it  retained  an 
even  more  than  respectable  existence.  The  skill, 
taste,  and  love  for  the  creation  of  beauty,  which 
were  the  heritage  of  the  race,  were  kept  alive. 


CHAPTER  III   A    SAMPLERS  AND 
A  WORD   ABOUT   QUILTS 

ADAPTER  upon  Samplers,  by  right,  should 
precede  the  discussion  of  colonial  em- 
broidery, although  the  practice  of  mothers 
in  crewel-work  was  simultaneous  with  it. 
They  were  carried  on  at  the  same  time,  but  the 
embroidery  was  work  for  grown-up  people,  while 
samplers  were  baby  work — a  beginning  as  neces- 
sary as  being  taught  to  walk  or  talk,  to  the  future 
of  the  child.  Fortunately,  the  very  infant  interest 
in  samplers  has  tended  to  their  preservation,  and 
when  the  child  grew  to  womanhood  the  sampler 
became  invested  with  a  mingling  of  family  in- 
terests and  affections,  and  she,  the  executant, 
came  to  look  upon  it  with  motherliness.  The  lov- 
ing pride  of  the  mother  in  the  child's  accomplish- 
ment also  tended  to  the  care  and  preservation  of 
the  first  work  of  the  small  hands. 

As  late  as  the  twenties  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  infant  schools  still  existed  and  samplers 
were  wrought  by  infant  fingers.  Eighty-five  years 
ago,  I  myself  was  in  one  of  a  row  of  little  chairs 
in  the  infant  school,  with  a  small  spread  of  canvas 

[48] 


SAMPLERS  AND  A   WORD  ABOUT  QUILTS 

lying  over  my  lap  and  being  sewn  to  my  skirt  by 
misdirected  efforts.  My  box  held  a  tiny  thimble 
and  spools  of  green  and  red  sewing  silk,  and  I 
tucked  it  under  alternate  knees  for  safety. 

Sarah  Woodruff! — I  wonder  where  she  is  now? 
; — sat  next  to  me  in  my  sampler  days,  and  her  can- 
vas was  white,  while  mine  was  yellow.  Her  border 
was  worked  with  blue,  and  mine  with  green.  With 
a  child's  inscrutable  and  wonderful  awareness  of 
underlying  facts,  I  knew  that  Sarah  Woodruffs 
father  was  richer  than  mine,  and  that  the  white 
canvas  and  blue  border,  which  the  teacher  said 
"went  with  it,"  was  an  indication  of  it.  I  have 
it  now,  the  little  faded  yellow  parallelogram  of 
canvas,  on  which  the  germ  of  the  very  fingers 
with  which  I  am  now  writing  wrought  with  pains- 
taking care — "Executed  by  Candace  Thurber,  her 
age  six  years."  They  have  since  had  various 
fortunes  and  experiences,  these  fingers,  and  have 
wrought  to  the  satisfaction,  I  hope,  of  their  fore- 
gone line  of  Puritan  ancestors. 

The  sampler  has  special  claims  upon  the  world, 
because  it  is  probable  that  all  forms  of  textile 
design  originated  with  it.  In  fact,  design  for 
needlework  began  with  small  squares  formed 

[49] 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

by  crossing  stitches  at  the  junction  of  textile 
fiber. 

In  sequences  these  squares  formed  lines,  blocks, 
and  corner,  and  in  double-line  juxtaposition  made 
the  form  of  border  probably  the  oldest  orna- 
mental decoration  in  the  world,  generally  known 
as  a  Roman  border.  This  decoration  escaped  from 
textiles  into  stone  and  building  materials,  and  in 
fact  appeared  in  the  elaboration  of  all  materials, 
from  the  fronts  of  temples  to  the  ornamentation 
of  a  crown.  The  most  ancient  examples  of  design 
are  founded  upon  a  square,  and  this  points  inev- 
itably to  the  stitch  covering  the  crossing  of  threads, 
the  cross-stitch,  which  preceded  all  others  and 
remained  the  only  decorative  stitch  until  weaving 
sprang  into  so  fine  an  art  that  interstices  between 
threads  are  unnoticeable.  Then,  and  not  until 
then,  the  long  over-stitch,  the  opus  plumarium, 
which  we  call  "Kensington,"  was  invented,  and 
served  to  make  English  embroidery  famous  in 
early  English  history.  This  was  the  stitch  used 
by  the  Pilgrim  mothers  in  their  crewel  embroidery, 
as  we  use  it  to-day  in  most  of  our  decorative 
presentations. 

In  spite  of  the  achievements  of  the  opus  p/u- 

[50] 


SAMPLER  worked  by  Adeline  Bryant  in  1826.  now  in  the 
possession  of  Annu  D.  Trowbridge,  Hackensack,  N.  J. 


SAMPLERS   AND  A   WORD   ABOUT   QUILTS 

marium,  we  are  indebted  to  simple  cross-stitch, 
to  the  obligations  of  the  mathematical  square  of 
hand  weavings,  for  all  the  wonderful  borderings 
which  have  been  evolved  by  ages  of  the  use  of 
the  needle,  since  decoration  began.  We  do  not 
stop  to  think  of  the  artistic  intelligence  or  gift 
which  made  mathematical  spaces  express  beautiful 
form,  any  more  than  we  stop  in  our  reading  to 
think  of  the  sensitive  intelligence  which  drew  a 
letter  and  made  it  the  expression  of  sound,  and  yet 
most  of  us  use  the  result  of  some  exceptional  in- 
telligence and  feel  the  exaltation  of  what  we  call 
culture. 

The  stitch  itself  is  entitled  to  the  greatest  re- 
spect, as  the  very  first  form  of  decoration  with 
the  needle — an  art  growing  out  of  and  controlled 
by  the  earlier  art  of  weaving.  Decorative  bands 
of  cross-stitch  come  to  us  on  shreds  of  linen 
found  in  the  sepulchers  of  Egypt  and  the  burial 
grounds  of  the  prehistoric  races  of  South  America. 
I  have  seen,  in  a  collection  of  textiles  found  in 
their  ancient  burial  places,  the  most  elaborate 
and  beautiful  of  cross-stitch  borders,  wrought  into 
the  fabrics  which  enriched  Pizarro's  shiploads  of 
loot  sent  from  Vicuna,  Peru,  to  the  court  of 

151] 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

Spain  at  the  time  of  the  wonderful  and  barbar- 
ous "  Conquest."  All  of  the  old  "  Roman"  borders 
are  found  in  this  collection,  the  best  designs  the 
world  has  produced,  those  which  architects  of  the 
period  used  upon  the  fronts  and  in  the  interiors 
of  their  first  creations.  And  here  arises  the  ever 
recurring  question  of  thought-sharing  between  the 
most  widely  removed  of  the  earlier  human  races. 
How  did  early  Peruvians  and  far-off  Latins  think 
in  the  same  forms,  and  how  did  they  come  to 
select  certain  ones  as  the  best,  and  cleave  to  them 
as  a  common  inheritance?  But  leaving  the  puz- 
zle of  design  and  returning  to  the  cross-stitch, 
which  was  its  first  interpretation  or  medium,  and 
to  the  little  Puritans  who  shared  its  acquaintance 
and  practice  with  the  women  of  all  ages,  we  may 
see  how  the  New  England  sampler  opened  the 
door  of  inheritance. 

As  Eve  sewed  her  garments  of  leaves  in  the 
Garden  of  Eden,  so  each  one  of  these  little  Puritan 
Eves,  so  far  removed  in  the  long  history  of  the 
race  from  the  first  one,  was  heir  to  her  ingenuities 
as  well  as  her  failings,  from  her  patching  together 
of  small  and  inadequate  things,  to  her  creative 
.function  in  the  kingdom  of  the  world,  as  well  as  to 

[52] 


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SAMPLERS  AND  A   WORD  ABOUT   QUILTS 

her  attempts  to  sweeten  life,  and  to  her  failures 
and  successes. 

The  learning  to  do  an  A  or  a  B  in  cross-stitch 
was  the  beginning  of  household  doing,  which  is 
the  business  of  woman's  life.  The  decorative  and 
the  useful  were  evenly  balanced  in  sampler 
making.  All  this  skill  in  lettering  could  be  applied 
to  the  stores  of  household  linen  in  the  way  of 
marking,  for  cross-stitch  letters,  done  in  colored 
threads,  were  a  part  of  the  finish  of  sheets  and 
pillowcases  and  fine  toweling  which  made  so  im- 
portant a  part  of  the  riches  of  the  household, 
and  it  led  by  easy  grades  of  familiarity  to  more 
comprehensive  methods  of  decoration.  In  truth, 
the  letters  first  practiced  in  cross-stitch  opened 
the  door  to  all  future  elaborations,  and  were  the 
vehicle  of  moral  instruction  as  well;  for  little 
Puritans  took  their  first  doses  of  Bible  history 
in  carefully  embroidered  text,  and  their  notions 
of  pictorial  art  from  cross-stitch  illustrations. 
One  finds  upon  some  of  the  early  examples  pic- 
tures of  Adam  and  Eve  in  the  Garden  of  Eden, 
with  the  ever  present  author  of  sin,  climbing 
the  stem  of  the  tree  of  life,  or  Jacob's  dream 
of  angels  ascending  and  descending  a  ladder, 

[53] 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

intersecting  clouds  of  blue  and  smoke-colored 
stitches. 

These  pictorial  samplers  are  certainly  interest- 
ing, but  those  which  confine  themselves  to  simple 
cross-stitch  with  borders,  and  the  name  of  the  lit- 
tle child  who  wrought  them,  touch  a  note  of  do- 
mestic life  which  is  more  than  interesting. 

The  sampler  was  purely  English  in  its  deriva- 
tion and  followed  the  English  with  great  fidelity, 
although  redolent  of  Puritan  life  and  thought. 
Sometimes,  indeed,  it  carried  cross-stitch  to  the 
very  limit  of  its  capability  in  an  attempt  to 
render  Bible  scenes  pictorially,  but  for  the  most 
part  it  was  confined  to  the  practice  of  various 
styles  of  lettering  consolidated  into  text  or  verse. 

The  material  upon  which  they  were  worked  was 
generally  of  canvas,  either  white  or  yellow,  and 
this  was  of  English  manufacture.  As  all  manu- 
factures were  things  of  price,  later  samplers  were 
often  worked  upon  coarse  homespun  linens,  which, 
barring  the  variations  in  the  size  of  the  threads 
inevitable  in  hand-spinning,  made  a  fairly  good 
material  for  cross-stitch. 

Sampler  making  was  a  home  rather  than  a 
school  taught  industry,  going  down  from  mother 

[54] 


_-       v&r 

ate 


Courtesy  of  Essex  Institute.  Salem.  Mass. 
Courtesy  Metropolitan  Museum  of  Art.  Hew  York 

Left    — SAMPLER  worked  by  Christiana  Baird.     Late  eighteenth  century  American. 

Right  —  MEMORIAL  PIECE  worked  in  silks,  on  white  satin.     Sacred  to  the  memory  of 
Major  Anthony  Morse,  who  died  March  22,  1805. 


SAMPLER  of  Moravian  embroidery,  worked  in  1806. 
by  Sarah  Ann  Smith,  of  Smithtown,  L.  I. 


SAMPLERS  AND   A   WORD   ABOUT   QUILTS 

to  daughter  along  with  darning  and  other  processes 
of  the  needle,  and  having  no  relation,  except  that 
of  its  dexterity,  to  the  distinct  style  of  decorative 
embroidery  called  crewelwork,  which  accom- 
panied it,  or  even  preceded  it. 

The  collecting  of  samplers  has  become  rather  a 
fad  in  these  days,  and  as  they  are  almost  exclu- 
sively of  New  England  origin,  it  gives  an  opportu- 
nity of  acquaintance  with  the  little  Puritan  girl 
which  is  not  without  its  charm.  As  most  of  their 
samplers  were  signed  with  their  names,  the 
acquaintance  becomes  quite  intimate,  and  one 
feels  that  these  little  Puritans  were  good  as  well 
as  diligent.  Here  is  Harmony  TwitchelTs  name 
upon  a  blue  and  white  sampler.  What  child 
whose  name  was  Harmony  could  quarrel  with 
other  children,  or  how  could  this  other,  whose 
long-suffering  name  was  Patience,  be  resentful  of 
the  roughnesses  of  small  male  Puritans?  Hate- 
evil  and  Wait-still  and  Hope-still  and  Thanks  and 
Unity  must  have  sat  together  like  little  doves  and 
made  crooked  A's  and  B's  and  C's  and  picked  out 
the  frayed  sewing-silk  threads  under  the  reproofs 
of  the  teacher  of  the  Infant  School,  Miss  Mather 
of  Miss  Coffin  or  Miss  Hooker,  whose  father  was 

5  [55] 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

a  clergyman,  or  even  Miss  Bradford,  whose 
uncle  was  the  Governor? 

All  this  is  in  the  story  of  the  sampler,  and  so 
the  teaching  and  practice  of  the  canvas  went 
constantly  forward.  The  method  was  so  simple, 
quite  within  the  capacity  of  an  alphabet-studying 
child.  To  make  an  A  in  cross-stitch  was  to 
create  a  link  between  the  baby  mind  and  the 
letter  represented.  There  was  no  choice,  no 
judgment  or  experience  needed.  The  limit  of 
every  stitch  was  fixed  by  a  cross  thread,  one 
little  open  space  to  send  the  needle  down  and 
another  through  which  to  bring  it  back,  and  the 
next  one  and  the  next,  then  to  cross  the  threads 
and  the  thing  was  done.  Yes,  the  little  slips 
could  make  a  sampler,  every  one  of  them,  and 
when  it  was  made,  sometimes  it  was  put  in  a 
frame  with  a  glass  over  it,  and  Patience's  mother 
would  show  it  to  visitors,  and  Patience  would 
taste  the  sweets  of  superiority,  than  which  there  is 
nothing  to  the  childish  heart,  nor  even  to  mature 
humanity,  so  sweet. 

There  were  Infant  Schools  in  my  own  days, 
little  congregations  of  children  not  far  removed 
from  babyhood,  who  were  taught  the  alphabet 

[56] 


u.i  i  in  in  iii  '  yiv^'Jl?  rt  a»< 


Q_ii2r£wKY2 


*rt«y  J/w.  £.  if.  Sanford,  Madison,  N.  J. 

Courtesy  Mrs.  E.  M.  Sanford.  Madison,  JV.  /. 

Left  — SAMPLER  worked  by  Nancy  Dennis,  Argyle.  N.  Y..  in  1810. 
Right — SAMPLER  worked  by  Nancy  McMurray,  of  Salem.  N.  Y.,  in  1793- 


Courtesy  Colonial  Rooms,  John  Wanamaker,  New  York 

PETIT  POINT  PICTURE  which  belonged  to  President  John  Quincy  Adams, 
and  now  in  the  Dwight  M.  Prouty  collection. 


SAMPLERS  AND  A  WORD  ABOUT  QUILTS 

from  huge  cards,  and  repeated  it  simultaneously 
from  the  great  blackboard  which  was  mounted 
in  the  center  of  the  room.  In  the  schools,  as  well 
as  at  home,  every  little  girl-baby  was  taught  to 
sew,  to  overhand  minutely  upon  small  blocks  of 
calico,  the  edges  turned  over  and  basted  together. 
When  a  perfect  capacity  for  overhand  sewing  was 
established,  the  next  short  step  was  to  the  sampler, 
and  the  tiny  fingers  were  guided  along  the  intri- 
cacies of  canvas  crossings.  The  dear  little  rose- 
tipped  fingers!  the  small  hands!  velvet  soft  and 
satin  smooth,  diverse  even  in  their  littlenesses! 
They  were  taught  even  then  to  be  dexterous  with 
woman's  special  tool,  the  very  same  in  purpose 
and  intent  with  which  queens  and  dames  and 
ladies  had  played  long  before. 

The  sampler  world  was  a  real  world  in  those 
days,  full  of  youth  and  as  living  as  the  youth  of 
the  world  must  always  be,  but  now  it  is  dead  as 
the  mummies,  and  the  carefully  preserved  remains 
are  only  the  shell  which  once  held  human  rivalries 
and  passions. 

Quilts 

The  domestic  needlework  of  the  late  seven- 
teenth and  early  eighteenth  centuries,  should  not 

[57] 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

be  overlooked  in  a  history  of  embroidery,  it  being 
often  so  ambitiously  decorative  and  the  stitchery 
so  remarkable.  The  patchwork  quilt  was  an 
instance  of  much  of  this  effort.  It  was  unfortu- 
nate that  an  economic  law  governed  this  species 
of  work,  which  prevented  its  possible  development. 
The  New  England  conscience,  sworn  to  utility 
in  every  form,  had  ruled  that  no  material  should 
be  bought  for  this  purpose.  It  could  only  take 
advantage  of  what  happened,  and  it  seldom 
happened  that  cottons  of  two  or  three  harmonious 
colors  came  together  in  sufficient  quantity  to 
complete  the  five-by-five  or  six-by-six  which  went 
to  the  making  of  a  patchwork  quilt.  Nevertheless 
one  sometimes  comes  across  a  "rising  sun"  or  a 
"setting  sun"  bedquilt  which  is  remarkable  for 
skillful  shading,  and  was  an  inspiration  in  the 
house  where  it  was  born,  and  where  the  needle- 
work comes  quite  within  the  pale  of  ornamental 
stitchery. 

This  variety  of  domestic  needlework,  and  one 
or  two  others  which  are  akin  to  it,  survived  in 
the  northern  and  middle  states  in  the  form  of 
quilting  until  at  least  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  while  in  the  southern  states,  especially  in 

[58] 


SAMPLERS   AND  A   WORD   ABOUT   QUILTS 

the  mountains  of  Kentucky  and  North  Carolina,  it 
still  survives  in  its  original  painstaking  excellence. 
Among  the  earlier  examples  of  these  quilts 
one  occasionally  finds  one  which  is  really  worthy 
of  the  careful  preservation  which  it  receives.  I 
remember  one  which  impressed  itself  upon  my 
memory  because  of  the  humanity  interwoven 
with  it,  as  well  as  the  skill  of  its  making.  It  was 
a  construction  of  blocks,  according  to  patchwork 
law,  every  alternate  block  of  the  border  having 
an  applied  rose  cut  from  printed  calico  in  alternate 
colors  of  yellow,  red,  and  blue.  These  roses  were 
carefully  applied  with  buttonhole  stitch,  and  the 
cotton  ground  underneath  cut  away  to  give 
uniform  thickness  for  quilting.  The  main  body 
of  the  quilt  was  unnoticeably  good,  being  a 
collection  of  faintly  colored  patches  of  correct 
construction.  The  quilting  was  a  marvel — a  large 
carefully  drawn  design,  evidently  inspired  by 
branching  rose  vines  without  flowers,  only  the 
leafage  and  stems  being  used,  and  all  these  bend- 
ing forms  filled  in  with  a  diamonded  background 
of  exquisite  quilting.  The  palely  colored  center 
was  distinguished  only  by  its  needlework,  leaving 
the  rose  border  to  emphasize  and  frame  it. 

[59] 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

There  was  a  bit  of  personal  history  attached  to 
this  quilt  in  the  shape  of  a  small  tag,  which  said: 

"This  quilt  made  by  Delia  Piper,  for  occupation 
after  the  death  of  an  only  son.  Bolivar,  Southern 
Missouri,  1845." 

The  same  kind  friend  who  had  introduced  me 
to  this  quilt,  finding  me  appreciative  of  woman's 
efforts  in  fine  stitchery,  took  me  to  call  upon 
other  pieces  which  were  equally  worthy  of  admira- 
tion. One  was  a  white  quilt  of  what  was  called 
"stuffed  work,"  made  by  working  two  surfaces  of 
cloth  together,  the  upper  one  of  fine  cambric,  the 
lower  one  of  coarse  homespun.  Upon  the  upper 
one  a  large  ornamental  basket  was  drawn,  filled 
with  flowers  of  many  kinds,  the  drawing  outlines 
being  followed  by  a  back  stitchery  as  regular  and 
fine  as  if  done  by  machine,  looking,  in  fact,  like  a 
string  of  beaded  stitches,  and  yet  it  was  accom- 
plished by  a  needle  in  the  hand  of  a  skillful  but 
unprofessional  sewer.  The  picture,  for  it  was  no 
less,  was  completed  by  the  stuffing  of  each  leaf 
and  flower  and  stem  with  flakes  of  cotton  pushed 
through  the  homespun  lining.  The  weaving  of 
the  basket  was  a  marvel  of  bands  of  buttonholed 
material,  which  stood  out  in  appropriate  thick- 

[60] 


SAMPLERS  AND  A  WORD  ABOUT  QUILTS 

ness.  The  centers  of  the  flowers  had  simulated 
stamens  done  in  knotted  work. 

I  think  this  stuffed  work  was  rather  rare,  for  I 
have  only  seen  two  specimens,  and  as  it  required 
unusual  and  exhaustive  skill  in  needlework,  the 
production  was  naturally  limited.  The  practice 
was  one  of  the  exotic  efforts  of  some  one  of  large 
leisure  and  lively  ambitions  who  belonged  to  the 
class  of  prosperous  citizens. 

"Patchwork,"  as  it  was  appropriately  called, 
was  more  often  a  farmhouse  industry,  which 
accounts  for  its  narrow  limits,  since,  with  choice 
of  material,  even  a  small  familiarity  with  geo- 
metrical design  might  bring  good  results.  It 
might  have  easily  become  good  domestic  art. 
Geometrical  borders  in  two  colors  would  have 
taken  their  place  in  decorative  work,  and  the 
applied  work,  so  often  ventured  upon,  was  the 
beginning  of  one  very  capable  method.  The 
skillful  needlework,  the  elaborate  quilting,  the 
stitchery  and  stuffing  are  worthy  of  respect,  for 
the  foundation  of  it  all  was  great  dexterity  in 
the  use  of  the  needle. 


O—/  A TJl.  J—»  JL  ^  >. 

w 


CHAPTER  IV  A  MORAVIAN 
WORK,  PORTRAITURE,  FRENCH 
EMBROIDERY,  AND  LACEWORK 

rHILE  the  ladies  and  house  mistresses 
of  New  England  were  busy  with  their 
crewelwork,  the  children  with  their 
little  samplers,  and  farm  house- 
mothers sewed  patchwork  in  the  intervals  of 
spinning  and  weaving,  an  entirely  different  de- 
velopment of  needlework  art  had  taken  place,  be- 
ginning in  Pennsylvania.  Embroidery  in  America 
did  not  grow  exclusively  from  seed  brought  over 
in  the  Mayflower.  It  sprang  from  many  sources, 
but  its  finest  qualities  came  from  the  influence  of 
what  was  called  "Bethlehem  Embroidery." 

The  advent  of  this  style  of  needlework  was  in- 
teresting. It  originated  in  a  religious  community 
founded  in  1722  at  Herrnhut,  Germany,  by  Count 
Zinzendorf.  It  was  a  strictly  religious,  semimo- 
nastic  group  of  single  men  and  single  women,  whose 
hearts  were  filled  with  zeal  for  mission  work.  At 
that  period,  I  suppose  America  seemed  a  possible 
and  promising  field  for  such  efforts,  and  accord- 
ingly forty-five  of  the  brothers  and  as  many  of 

[62] 


MORAVIAN   WORK 


the  sisters  turned  their  faces  toward  this  new 
world.  One  can  fancy  that  when  the  thought 
first  entered  their  minds,  of  coming  to  a  land 
peopled  by  savage  Indians,  with  but  a  bare 
sprinkling  of  "the  Lord's  people,'*  they  trembled 
even  in  their  dreams  at  the  thought  of  the  cruel 
incidents  they  might  encounter  in  that  wilderness 
toward  which  they  were  impelled  by  apostolic 
zeal,  and  the  unquiet  sea  upon  which  they  were 
about  to  embark  foreshadowed  an  unknown 
future.  But  there  was  small  danger  for  them 
upon  the  sea;  surely  they  could  not  sink  in 
troubled  waters,  these  etherial  souls!  The 
heavenly  quality  of  them  would  upbear  the 
vessel  and  cargo.  They  would  come  safe  to  land, 
no  matter  how  tempestuous  the  elements ! 

I  suppose,  at  all  periods  of  the  world,  prophet 
and  martyr  stuff  might  be  sifted  out  from  the  man- 
stuff  of  the  times  if  the  race  had  need  of  them. 
In  normal  states  of  growth,  we  call  them  "cranks" 
and  look  for  no  results  from  their  existence. 
But  the  elusive  spirit  of  love  never  dies.  It 
appears  and  reappears  in  the  history  of  all  races 
and  times,  and  leaves  its  mark  upon  them  in 
various  shapes  of  beneficence. 

163] 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

These  missionary  brothers  and  sisters  had 
chosen  as  the  theater  of  their  labor  that  part  of 
our  broad  land  which  was  pleasantly  christened 
Pennsylvania,  and  selecting  a  portion  of  the 
southern  area,  they  founded  their  colony  and 
called  it  "Ephrata." 

It  existed  for  forty  years,  constantly  increasing 
its  membership,  and  living  a  life  reaching  out 
toward  a  perfection  of  goodness  which  seemed 
quite  possible  to  their  apostolic  souls. 

Time,  however,  brought  changes  of  circumstance 
and  of  mind,  and  after  many  philanthropic  phases, 
in  1749  the  mingled  elements  and  aspirations  of 
the  enlarged  congregation  were  merged  into  two 
boarding  schools,  one  for  boys,  which  was  the 
germ  of  Lehigh  University,  and  another  for  girls 
at  Bethlehem,  which,  under  the  careful  fostering 
of  the  sisters,  became  the  birthplace  of  the  fa- 
mous Moravian  needlework.  So  were  melted  into 
the  modern  form  of  scholastic  instruction  the 
various  efforts  of  religious  activity,  the  eternal 
reaching  out  for  conditions  in  human  life  in  which 
it  is  easy  and  natural  to  be  good  and  happy.  It 
had  not  been  accomplished  in  this  semimonastic 
life,  but  the  efforts  toward  it  had  their  influence, 

[64] 


NEEDLEBOOK  of  Moravian  embroidery,  made  about    1850. 
Now  in  the  possession  of  Mrs.  J.  U.  Myers,  Bethlehem,  Pa. 


Courtesy  of  Claire  Reynolds  Tubbs,  Gladstone,  N.  J. 


MORAVIAN"  EMBROIDERY  worked  by  Emily  E.  Reynolds.  Plymouth,  Pa.,  in  1834.  at  the  age  of 
twelve,  while  at  the  Moravian  Seminary  in  Bethlehem,  and  now  owned  by  her  granddaughter. 


MORAVIAN   WORK 


and,  you  may  judge  by  the  quality  of  its  founders, 
had  never  died. 

The  two  schools  very  early  in  their  history 
seem  to  have  established  a  reputation  for  learning 
and  culture  which  made  them  a  desirable  influence 
in  the  formative  lives  of  the  children  of  the  most 
thoughtful,  as  well  as  the  most  prominent  and 
prosperous,  American  families.  Indeed,  the  school 
for  girls  became  so  popular  as  to  lead  to  an  ex- 
tension and  founding  of  several  branches  in  other 
of  the  southern  states.  The  art  and  practice  of 
fine  needlework  became  a  popular  and  necessary 
feature  of  them,  distinguishing  them  from  all 
other  schools.  "Tambour  and  fine  needlework" 
were  among  the  extras  of  the  school,  and  charged 
for,  as  we  learn  from  school  records,  at  the  rate 
of  "seventeen  shillings  and  sixpence,  Pennsyl- 
vania currency." 

It  was  not  alone  tambour  and  fine  needlework, 
as  we  shall  see  later,  that  was  taught  by  the 
Moravian  Sisters,  but  the  ribbon  work,  crdpe 
work,  and  flower  embroidery,  and  picture  pro- 
duction upon  satin.  These  pictures,  however 
important  as  performances,  were  not  the  most 
common  form  of  needlework  taught  by  the 

[65] 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

Sisters.  Flower  embroidery  was  the  usual  form 
of  practice,  and  it  was  of  a  quality  which  made 
each  one  a  wonder  of  execution  and  skill.  The  ma- 
terials were  satin  of  a  superb  quality  for  the  back- 
ground, or  Eastern  silk  of  softness  and  strength, 
and  the  silks  used  in  the  stitchery  were  generally 
"slack  twisted"  silk  threads  of  very  pure  quality, 
and  in  certain  cases,  where  they  would  not  be 
likely  to  fray,  lustrous  flosses  of  Eastern  make. 
The  stitch  used  in  these  flower  pieces  was  an 
over-and-over  stitch,  or  what  was  called  satin- 
stitch,  which  was  without  the  lap  of  Kensington 
stitch.  There  was  in  every  piece  of  embroidery 
done  under  the  instruction  of  the  accomplished 
and  devoted  Sisters  certain  virtues,  certain  effects 
of  conscientious  and  patient  work,  mingled  with 
the  love  of  good  and  beautiful  art,  which  were 
plainly  visible.  It  had  in  all  its  flower  pieces,  and 
they  were  many,  the  quality  of  beautiful  charm. 
The  ministry  of  nature  may  have  had  something 
to  do  with  this,  since  the  lives  of  the  executants 
were  open  to  its  influences. 

One  can  make  a  mental  picture  of  those  early 
days  beside  the  peaceful  "Lehi,"  where  the 
Sisters  taught  and  nurtured  the  young  girls  of 

[66] 


MORAVIAN   WORK 


very  young  America,  and  trained  them  in  such 
beautiful  and  womanly  accomplishments.  The 
scattered  bits  of  needlework  which  remain  to  us 
are  so  fine,  so  clear,  so  thoroughly  exhaustive  of 
all  excellence  in  technique,  that  they  are  to  the 
art  of  embroidery  what  the  ivory  miniature  is  to 
painting.  We  cannot  but  hail  the  memory  of  the 
Sisters  of  Bethlehem  with  respect  and  admiration. 
I  became  familiar  with  the  work  of  this  com- 
munity when  I  was  arranging  an  historic  exhibi- 
tion of  American  Embroidery  for  the  Bartholdi 
Fair  in  1883.  Few  people  may  remember  that, 
among  the  means  for  the  installation  of  the 
Bartholdi  Statue  of  Liberty  which  welcomes  the 
world  at  the  entrance  to  the  harbor  of  New  York, 
was  an  effort  called  the  Bartholdi  Fair,  held  in 
the  then  almost  new  and  very  popular  Academy 
of  Design  at  the  northwestern  corner  of  Fourth 
Avenue  and  Twenty-third  Street.  Knowing  the 
value  of  Bethlehem  work,  I  made  an  effort  to 
secure  a  representative  collection,  with  the  result 
of  gathering  a  most  interesting  group  of  specimens, 
mainly  by  the  interest  and  help  of  Mr.  Henry 
Baldwin  of  Lehigh  University,  to  whom  I  was 
referred  for  assistance  in  my  purpose.  I  have 

[67] 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

before  me  now  the  correspondence  which  ensued, 
a  most  painstaking,  kind  and  patient  one  on  his 
part,  giving  me  much  interesting  history  of  the 
Bethlehem  mission,  as  well  as  its  life  and  progress. 
Among  the  legends  is  one — that  during  our 
Revolutionary  war,  Pulaski  recruited  some  of  his 
Legion  at  Bethlehem,  and  ordered  a  banner,  which 
was  carried  by  his  troops  until  he  fell  in  the 
attack  upon  Savannah.  This  banner  is  now  in 
the  rooms  of  the  Maryland  Historical  Society,  and 
I  find  the  question  of  its  having  been  an  order 
from  Count  Pulaski,  or  a  gift  to  the  Legion,  is  one 
of  very  lively  interest  in  the  community. 

This  exhibit  of  1883  was  as  complete  an  histori- 
cal collection  of  American  needlework  as  was 
possible,  and  I  have  a  list  of  ten  articles  loaned 
from  collections  in  Bethlehem,  which  reads  as 
follows: 

1.  Embroidered  pocketbook  of  black  silk  with 
flowers   in   bright   colors.     Former   property   of 
Bishop  Bigler. 

2.  Embroidered  needlebook  of  white  satin  with 
bright  flowers,  date  1800. 

3.  Embroidered  needlebook  of  white  satin  with 
bright  flowers  and  vines,  dated  1786. 

[68] 


MORAVIAN   WORK 


4.  Sampler,  dated  1740. 

5.  Yellow  velvet  bag  embroidered  with  ribbon 
work. 

6.  Black  velvet  bag  embroidered  in  crepe  work 
with  flowers. 

7.  White  satin  workbag  embroidered    in    fine 
tracery  of  vines. 

8.  A  box  with  embroidered  pincushion  on  top. 

9.  A  blue  silk  pocketbook  with  very  fine  ribbon 
work. 

10.  A  paper  box  done  with  needle  in  filigree. 

It  will  be  seen  by  this  list  how  varied  were  the 
forms  of  needlework  taught  at  Bethlehem.  The 
crepe  work  mentioned  in  No.  6  is,  probably 
owing  to  the  perishable  character  of  its  material, 
very  rare,  but  was  extremely  beautiful  in  effect. 
Bits  of  colored  cr£pe  were  gathered  into  flower 
petals  and  sewed  upon  satin,  roses  laid  leaf  upon 
leaf  and  built  up  to  a  charming  perfection,  while 
the  stems  and  foliage  were  partially  or  wholly 
embroidered  in  silk. 

The  ribbon  embroidery  of  No.  5,  has  been 
revived  by  the  New  York  Society  of  Decorative 
Art  and  practiced  with  great  success.  The 
flower  embroideries,  in  the  specimens  exhibited, 

1691 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

were  of  two  sorts — the  small  groups  being  done 
with  fine  twisted  silks  in  a  simple  "over  and  over" 
stitch,  called  at  that  time  "satin  stitch,"  alike 
on  both  sides,  except  that  on  the  right  side  the 
flowers  and  leaves  were  raised  from  the  surface 
by  an  under  thread  of  cotton  floss  called  "stuff- 
ing." This  did  not  prevent,  as  it  might  easily 
have  done,  an  unvarying  regularity  and  smooth- 
ness, which  was  like  satin  itself,  thread  laid 
beside  thread  as  if  it  were  woven  instead  of 
sewed. 

In  the  larger  flowers,  the  sewing  silk  had  been 
split  into  flosses,  or  perhaps  the  prepared  flosses 
were  used  in  the  "tent  stitch,"  which  is  now 
known  as  "Kensington."  The  colors  of  all  these 
specimens  were  as  fresh  as  natural  flowers,  speak- 
ing eloquently  in  praise  of  early  processes  of 
dyeing. 

These  things  seem  to  fairly  exhale  gentility, 
that  quality-compact  of  everything  superior  in 
the  life  of  early  American  womanhood.  I  have 
especially  in  mind  one  cushion  where  flowers, 
apparently  as  fresh  in  color  as  when  the  cushion 
was  young,  are  laid  upon  a  ground  of  silk  of  the 
pinky-ash  color,  once  known  as  "ashes  of  roses." 

[70] 


.' 

%r- 


«. 


t&i  ** 


&. 


MORAVIAN   WORK 


The  real  charm  of  the  thing,  that  which  lends  it  a 
tender  romance,  is  the  legend  worked  upon  the 
back  of  the  cushion  in  brown  silk  stitches  which 
are  easily  mistaken  for  the  round-hand  copper- 
plate writing  of  the  period — "Wrought  where  the 
peaceful  Lehi  flows."  One  seems  to  breathe  the 
very  air  of  the  secluded  valley,  peopled  by  brethren 
and  sisters  set  apart  from  the  strenuous  duties  of 
the  builders  of  a  new  nation,  and  distinguished 
for  learned  and  devoted  effort  toward  the  perfec- 
tion of  moral,  and  spiritual,  rather  than  the  con- 
quests of  material,  life. 

The  Sisters  had  many  orders  from  the  outside 
world,  as  well  as  from  visitors,  and  the  profit 
upon  these  helped  to  maintain  the  school.  Many 
of  these  orders  were  in  the  shape  of  pocket- 
books,  pincushions,  bags,  etc.,  having  a  bunch,  or 
wreath,  or  cluster  of  flowers  on  one  side,  wonder- 
fully wrought  in  silken  flosses  or  sewing  silks,  and 
on  the  other,  some  pretty  sentiment  or  legend 
done  in  dark  brown  floss  in  the  most  perfect  of 
"round-hand";  so  perfect,  in  fact,  that  it  would 
require  the  closest  scrutiny  to  decide  that  it  was 
not  handwritten  script. 

These  plentiful  orders  for  things  were  induced 

6  [71] 


MORAVIAN  WORK 


by  the  several  attractions  of  the  situation,  the 
remoteness  from  warlike  and  political  disturbances, 
and  the  relationship  of  so  many  young  girl  lives, 
as  well  as  the  interest  which  attached  to  the 
school  and  community,  making  a  constant  de- 
mand in  the  shape  of  small  articles  of  use  or 
luxury,  decorated  by  the  skillful  fingers  of  the 
Sisters. 

Parallel  with  this  fine  practice  of  flower  em- 
broidery, was  a  period  of  far  more  important 
needlework,  which  we  may  call  Picture  Em- 
broidery. This  also  owed  its  introduction  to  the 
Moravian  School  of  Bethlehem,  although  it  was 
probably  of  early  English  origin,  going  back  to 
that  period  when  English  embroidery  was  the 
wonder  of  the  world;  and  the  opus  plumarium, 
or  feather-pen  stitch,  or  tent  stitch,  or  Kensington 
stitch,  as  it  has  been  known  in  succeeding  ages, 
first  attracted  attention  as  a  medium  of  art. 

Passing  from  England  to  Germany  it  became 
purely  ecclesiastical,  and  even  now  one  oc- 
casionally finds  in  Germany,  and  less  often  in 
England,  bits  of  ecclesiastical  embroidery  of  un- 
imaginable fineness,  commemorating  Christ's 
miracles  and  other  incidents  of  Bible  history. 

[72] 


MORAVIAN   WORK 


I  know  of  one  small  specimen  of  ancient  English 
art,  covering  a  space  of  five  by  seven  inches, 
where  the  whole  Garden  of  Eden  with  its  weighty 
tragedy  is  represented  by  inch-long  figures  of 
Adam  and  Eve,  and  a  man-headed  snake,  dis- 
cussing amicably  the  advantages  of  eating  or  not 
eating  the  forbidden  fruit. 

Such  elaboration  in  miniature  embroidery  made 
good  the  claim  of  English  needlework  to  its  first 
place  in  the  world,  since  nothing  more  wonderful 
had  or  has  been  produced  in  the  whole  long 
history  of  needlework  art.  It  was  undoubtedly 
from  this  school,  filtered  through  generations  of 
secular  practice,  that  the  Moravian  picture  em- 
broidery came  to  be  a  general  American  inherit- 
ance. 

To  adapt  this  wonderful  method  to  the  uses  of 
social  life  was  an  admirable  achievement,  and 
whether  by  the  sisters  of  the  Moravian  school, 
or  the  growth  of  pre-American  influence  and  time, 
we  do  not  certainly  know,  the  fact  remains,  how- 
ever, that  it  was  here  so  cunningly  adapted  to  the 
circumstances  and  spirit  of  colonial  and  early 
American  days  as  to  seem  to  belong  entirely  to 
them,  and  it  would  seem  quite  clear  that  Bethle- 

[73] 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

hem  was  the  source  of  the  most  skillful  needle- 
work art  in  America.  It  was  there  that  the  fine 
ladies  of  the  late  eighteenth  and  early  nineteenth 
centuries,  who  sat  at  the  embroidery  frame  in  the 
intervals  when  they  were  not  "sitting  at  the 
harp,"  acquired  their  skill. 

It  was  the  romantic  period  of  embroidery  that 
makes  a  very  telling  contrast  to  the  earlier  crewel 
and  later  muslin  embroidery  of  the  New  England 
states.  The  pieces  were  seldom  larger  than 
eighteen  or  twenty  inches  square,  the  size  probably 
governed  by  the  width  of  the  superb  satin  which 
was  so  often  used  as  a  background.  Not  in- 
variably, however,  for  I  have  seen  one  or  two 
pieces  worked  upon  gray  linen  where  the  surface 
was  entirely  covered  by  stitchery,  landscape, 
trees,  and  sky  showing  an  unbroken  surface  of 
satiny  texture.  Pictures  from  Bible  subjects  are 
frequent,  and  these  have  the  air  of  having  been 
copied  from  prints;  in  fact,  I  have  seen  some 
where  the  print  appears  underneath  the  stitches, 
showing  that  it  was  used  as  a  design.  These 
Scripture  pieces  seem  to  have  employed  a  lower 
degree  of  talent  than  those  having  original  design, 
and  were  probably  the  somewhat  perfunctory 

[74] 


MORAVIAN   WORK 


work  of  young  girls  whose  interests  were  else- 
where. One  picture  which  I  have  seen  was 
treasured  as  a  record  of  a  very  romantic  elope- 
ment— the  lover  in  the  case,  riding  gayly  away 
with  his  beloved  sitting  on  a  pillion  behind  him, 
and  no  witnesses  to  the  deed  but  a  small  sister, 
standing  at  the  gate  of  the  homestead  with  out- 
stretched hands  and  staring  eyes. 

The  most  important  picture  which  I  have  seen 
in  portrait  needlework  came  to  light  at  the 
Baltimore  Exhibition,  and  was  a  piazza  group  of 
five  figures,  a  burly  sea-captain  seated  in  a  rock- 
ing chair  in  a  nautical  dress  and  his  own  grayish 
hair  embroidered  above  his  ruddy  face,  his  wife 
in  a  white  satin  gown  seated  beside  him,  and  his 
three  daughters  of  appropriately  different  ages 
grouped  around,  while  the  ship  Constance  was 
tied  closely  to  the  edge  of  the  blue  water  which 
bordered  the  foreground  of  the  picture.  The  com- 
position of  this  picture  was  evidently  the  work  of 
some  experienced  artist,  for  its  incongruous  ele- 
ments kept  their  places  and  did  not  greatly  clash. 
Taken  as  a  whole  it  was  an  astonishing  perform- 
ance, quite  too  ambitious  in  its  grasp  for  the 
novel  art  of  needlework,  and  yet  a  thing  to  de- 

[75] 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

light   the   hearts   of  the   descendants,  or   even 
casual  possessors. 

The  Moravian  teaching  and  practice  spread  the 
principles  of  needlework  art  so  widely  that  it 
developed  in  many  different  directions.  The 
wonderful  silk  embroidery  applied  to  flowers  was, 
like  the  arts  of  drawing  and  painting,  capable  of 
being  used  in  copying  all  forms  of  beauty.  It  was 
sometimes,  not  always,  successfully  applied  to 
landscape  representation,  and  grew  at  last  into  a 
scheme  of  needlework  portraiture,  in  this  form 
perpetuating  family  history.  It  was  sometimes 
used  in  conjunction  with  painting,  the  faces  of  a 
family  group  being  done  in  water  color  upon 
cardboard  by  professional  painters  who  were 
members  of  the  art  guild,  who  wandered  from  one 
social  circle  to  another,  supplying  the  wants  of 
embroideresses  ambitious  of  distinction  in  their 
accomplishments.  The  small  painted  faces  were 
cut  from  the  cardboard  upon  which  they  had  been 
painted  and  worked  around,  often  with  the  actual 
hair  of  the  original  of  the  portrait.  I  have  seen 
one  picture  of  a  Southern  beauty,  where  the 
golden  hair  had  been  wound  into  tiny  curls,  and 
sewn  into  place,  and  the  lace  of  the  neckwear 

[761 


Courtesy  of  Mrs.  R.  B.  Mitchell,  Madison.  If.  J. 


ABRAHAM  AND  ISAAC.     Kensington  embroidery  by  Mary  Winifred  Hoskins  of  Edenton,  N.  C., 
while  attending  an  English  finishing  school  in  Baltimore  in  1814. 


MORAVIAN   WORK 


was  so  cleverly  simulated  as  to  look  almost 
detachable.  Of  course  such  pictures  were  the 
result  of  individual  experiment  on  the  part  of 
some  very  able  and  ambitious  needlewoman. 

One  can  imagine  that  the  effect  of  them  in 
social  life  was  to  add  greatly  to  the  vogue  of  the 
art  of  needlework.  The  most  numerous  of  these 
relics  were  called  "mourning  pieces" — bits  of 
memorial  embroidery — the  subject  of  the  picture 
being  generally  a  monument  surmounted  by  an 
urn,  overhung  with  the  sweeping  branches  of  a 
willow,  while  standing  beside  the  monument  is  a 
weeping  female  figure,  the  face  discreetly  hidden 
in  a  pocket  handkerchief.  The  inscriptions, 
"Sacred  to  the  memory,"  etc.,  were  written  or 
printed  upon  the  satin  in  India  ink,  and  often  the 
letters  of  the  name  were  worked  with  the  hair  of 
the  subject  of  the  memorial. 

In  these  pieces  it  is  rather  noticeable  that  the 
mourning  figure  is  always  draped  in  white,  which 
leads  to  the  conclusion  that  it  is  a  purely  em- 
blematic figure  of  an  emotion,  rather  than  a  real 
mourner.  The  shading  of  the  monument  was 
generally  done  in  India  ink,  so  that  the  actual 
embroidery  was  confined  to  the  trunk  and  long 

1771 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

branches  of  weeping  willow,  and  the  dress  of  the 
figure,  and  the  ground  upon  which  willow  and 
monument  and  figure  stand.  The  faces  being 
always  hidden  by  the  handkerchief,  and  a  tinted 
satin  serving  for  the  sky,  the  execution  of  these 
memorial  pictures  was  comparatively  simple. 
They  certainly  bear  an  undue  proportion  to  those 
happy  family  portraits  where  mother  and  children, 
or  husband  and  wife,  sit  in  love  and  simplicity 
before  the  pillared  magnificence  of  the  family 
mansion. 

Perhaps  the  greater  simplicity  and  ease  of 
execution  of  the  mourning  pieces  had  something 
to  do  with  their  greater  number.  They  may  have 
been  the  first  spelling  of  the  difficult  art  of  pic- 
torial embroidery.  The  best  of  these  picture 
embroideries  were  certainly  wonderful  creations 
as  far  as  the  use  of  the  needle  was  concerned,  and 
I  fancy  were  done  in  the  large  leisure  of  some 
colonial  home  where  early  distinction  in  the  art 
of  needlework  must  have  gone  hand  in  hand  with 
the  skill  of  the  traveling  portrait  painter.  These 
dainty  productions,  with  their  delicately  painted 
faces  and  hands,  are  far  more  often  found  than 
those  with  embroidered  flesh.  In  some  of  these, 

[781 


m,  Mais. 

•^ss 

Courtesy  Essex  Institute.  Salem,  Mass. 

Left    — FIRE  SCREEN  embroidered  in  cross-stitch  worsted.     From  the  AlcAt ullan  family  of  Salem. 

Right  —  FIRE  SCREEN,  design,  "The  Scottish  Chieftain,"  embroidered  in  cross-stitch  by  Mrs. 
Mary  H.  Cleveland  Allen. 


FIRE  SCREEN  worked  about  1850  by  Miss  C.  A.  Granger, 
of  Canandaigua,  N.  Y. 


MORAVIAN   WORK 


faces  painted  with  real  miniature  skill  upon  bits 
of  parchment  have  been  inserted  or  superimposed 
upon  the  satin,  the  edges,  as  I  have  said,  carefully 
covered  by  embroidery,  done  with  single  hair 
threaded  into  the  needle  instead  of  silk.  In  one 
case  which  I  remember,  the  yellow  hair  of  a 
child  was  knotted  into  a  bunch  of  solid  looking 
curls  covering  the  head  of  a  small  figure,  while 
the  face  of  the  mother  was  surmounted  by  bands 
of  a  reddish  brown.  This  little  touch  of  realism 
gave  a  curious  note  of  pathos  to  the  picture  of  a 
life  separated  from  the  present  by  time  and  out- 
grown habits,  but  linked  to  it  by  this  one  tangible 
proof  of  actual  existence. 

The  drawing  or  plan  of  these  pictures  was 
evidently  done  directly  upon  the  satin  ground,  as 
one  often  finds  the  outlines  showing  at  the  edge 
of  the  stitches;  but  in  the  few  specimens  I  have 
found  where  they  were  worked  upon  linen  it 
had  been  covered  with  a  tracing  on  strong  thin 
paper,  and  the  entire  design  worked  through 
and  over  both  paper  and  canvas.  Those  which 
were  done  upon  linen  seemed  to  belong  to  an 
earlier  period  than  those  worked  on  satin,  which 
was  perhaps  an  American  adaptation  of  the 

[79] 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

earlier  method.  Certainly  the  soft  thick  India 
satin,  which  was  the  ground  of  so  many  of  them, 
made  a  delightful  surface  for  embroidery,  and 
blended  with  its  colors  into  a  silvery  mass  where 
work  and  background  were  equally  effective. 
Two  of  these  have  survived  the  century  or  more 
of  careful  seclusion  which  followed  the  proud 
eclat  of  their  production.  One  of  the  fortunate 
heirs  to  many  of  these  exhibited  treasures  told 
me  of  a  package  or  book  containing  heads  in 
water  color,  evidently  to  be  used  as  copies  for  the 
faces  which  might  be  found  necessary  for  efforts 
in  embroidery.  The  painting  of  these  was  perhaps 
a  part  of  the  education  or  accomplishment  con- 
sidered necessary  to  girls  of  prominent  and 
successful  families  of  the  day. 

Under  favorable  circumstances,  such  as  a  con- 
venient relation  between  artist  and  needlework, 
this  art  would  have  developed  into  needlework 
tapestry.  The  groups  would  have  outgrown 
their  frames,  and  left  their  picture  spaces  on  the 
walls,  and,  stretching  into  life-size  figures,  have 
become  hangings  of  silken  broidery,  such  as  we 
find  in  Spain  and  Italy,  from  the  hands  of  nuns 
or  noble  ladies. 

[80] 


Courtesy  of  Essex  Institute,  Salem,  Mass. 
•  EMBROIDERED  PICTURE  in  silks,  with  a  painted  sky. 


Courtesy  of  Essex  Institute,  Salem.  Mass. 

CORN'ELIA  AND  THE  GRACCHI.     Embroidered  picture  in  silks,  with  velvet  inlaid,  worked  by 
Mrs.  Lydia  Very  of  Salem  at  the  age  of  sixteen  while  at  Mrs.  Peabody's  school. 


MORAVIAN   WORK 


The  influence  of  the  Bethlehem  teaching  lasted 
long  enough  to  build  up  a  very  fine  and  critical 
standard  of  embroidery  in  America.  It  would 
be  difficult  to  overestimate  the  importance  of 
the  influence  of  this  school  of  embroidery  upon 
the  needlework  practice  of  a  growing  country. 
Its  qualities  of  sincerity,  earnestness,  and  respect 
for  the  art  of  needlework  gave  importance  to  the 
work  of  hands  other  than  that  of  necessary  labor, 
and  these  qualities  influenced  all  the  various 
forms  of  work  which  followed  it.  The  first  di- 
vergence from  the  original  work  was  in  its  applica- 
tion, rather  than  its  method,  for  instead  of  having 
a  strictly  decorative  purpose  its  application  became 
almost  exclusively  personal.  Flower  embroidery 
of  surpassing  excellence  was  its  general  feature. 
The  materials  for  the  development  of  this  form 
of  art  were  usually  satin,  or  the  flexible  undressed 
India  silk  which  lent  itself  so  perfectly  to  orna- 
mentation. Breadths  of  cream-white  satin,  of  a 
thickness  and  softness  almost  unknown  in  the 
present  day,  were  stretched  in  Chippendale  em- 
broidery frames,  and  loops  and  garlands  of  flowers 
of  every  shape  and  hue  were  embroidered  upon 
them.  They  were  often  done  for  skirts  and  sleeves 

[81] 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

of  gowns  of  ceremony,  giving  a  distinction  even 
beyond  the  flowered  brocades  so  much  coveted 
by  colonial  belles. 

This  beautiful  flower  embroidery  was,  like  its 
predecessor,  the  rare  picture  embroidery,  too 
exacting  in  its  character  to  be  universal.  It 
needed  money  without  stint  for  its  materials, 
and  luxurious  surroundings  for  its  practice.  Some 
of  the  beautiful  old  gowns  wrought  in  that  day 
are  still  to  be  seen  in  colonial  exhibitions,  and  are 
even  occasionally  worn  by  great-great-grand- 
daughters at  important  mimic  colonial  functions. 

Floss  embroidery  upon  silk  and  satin  was  not 
entirely  confined  to  apparel,  for  we  find  an  oc- 
casional piece  as  the  front  panel  of  one  of  the 
large,  carved  fire  screens,  which  at  that  date  were 
universally  used  in  drawing-rooms  as  a  shelter 
from  the  glare  and  heat  of  the  great  open  fires 
which  were  the  only  method  of  heating.  As  the 
back  of  the  screen  was  turned  to  the  fire  and  the 
embroidered  face  to  the  room,  its  decoration  was 
shown  to  admirable  advantage,  and  one  can 
hardly  account  for  the  rarity  of  the  specimens  of 
these  antique  screens,  except  upon  the  supposition 
that  the  roses,  carnations,  and  forget-me-nots 

[82] 


MORAVIAN   WORK 


were  still  more  effective  when  wrought  upon  the 
scant  skirt  of  a  colonial  gown,  instead  of  being 
shrouded  in  their  careful  coverings  in  the  deserted 
drawing-room,  and  my  lady  of  the  embroidery 
might  more  effectively  exhibit  them  in  the  lights 
of  a  ballroom.  In  recording  the  changes  in  the 
style  and  purposes  of  embroidery,  from  the  days 
of  homespun  and  home-dyed  crewel  to  the  almost 
living  flowers  wrought  with  lustrous  flosses  upon 
breadths  of  satin  which  were  the  best  of  the 
world's  manufacture,  one  unconsciously  traverses 
the  ground  of  domestic  and  political  history, 
from  the  days  of  the  Pilgrims  to  the  pomp  of 
colonial  courts. 

French  Embroidery 

The  character  and  purposes  of  the  art  varied 
with  every  political  and  national  change.  In  the 
middle  of  the  eighteenth  century,  a  demand  had 
gone  out  from  the  new  and  growing  America,  and 
wandering  over  the  seas  had  asked  for  some- 
thing fine  and  airy  with  which  to  occupy  delicate 
hands,  unoccupied  with  household  toil.  The 
carefully  acquired  skill  of  the  earlier  periods  of 
our  history  became  in  succeeding  generations 

[83] 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

almost  an  inheritance  of  facility,  and  easily  merged 
into  the  elaborate  stitchery  called  French  em- 
broidery. I  can  find  no  trace  of  its  having  been 
taught,  but  plenty  of  proofs  of  its  existence  are 
to  be  seen  on  the  needlework  pictures  under  glass 
still  hanging  in  many  an  old-fashioned  parlor, 
or  relegated  to  the  curiosity  corner  of  modern 
drawing-rooms.  It  is  possible  that  the  close 
intimacy  existing  between  France  and  England 
at  that  period  may  have  influenced  this  art. 
Many  French  families  of  high  degree  were  seeking 
safety  or  profit  in  this  country,  and  the  convent- 
bred  ladies  of  such  families  would  naturally  have 
shared  their  acquirements  with  those  whose  favor 
and  interest  were  important  to  them  as  strangers. 
There  was  another  form  of  this  French  em- 
broidery, the  materials  used  being  cambrics, 
linens,  and  muslins  of  all  kinds,  the  most  precious 
of  which  were  the  linen-cambrics  and  India  mulls. 
The  use  of  the  former  still  survives  in  the  finest 
of  French  embroidered  pocket  handkerchiefs,  but 
the  latter  is  seldom  seen  except  in  the  veils  and 
vests  of  Oriental  women,  or  in  the  studio  draperies 
of  all  countries. 
The  threads  used  were  flosses  of  linen  or  cotton, 

[84] 


Courtesy  Metropolitan  Museum  of  Art,  New  York 
CAPE  of  white  lawn  embroidered.     Nineteenth  century  American. 


Courtesy  Metropolitan  Museum  of  Art.  A  no  York 
COLLARS  of  white  muslin  embroidered.     Nineteenth  century  American. 


MORAVIAN   WORK 


preferably  the  latter,  which  were  almost  entirely 
imported.  With  these  restricted  materials, 
wonders  of  ornamentation  were  performed.  The 
stitch,  quite  different  from  that  of  crewelwork 
or  picture  embroidery  of  the  preceding  period, 
was  the  simple  over  and  over  stitch  we  find  in 
French  embroidery  of  the  present  day.  The 
leaves  of  the  design  or  pattern  were  frequently 
brought  into  relief  by  a  stuffing  of  under  threads. 

Everything  was  embroidered;  gowns,  from  the 
belt  to  lower  hem,  finished  with  scalloped  and 
sprigged  ruffles  in  the  same  delicate  workmanship, 
were  everyday  summer  wear.  Slips  and  sacques, 
which  were  not  quite  as  much  of  an  undertaking 
as  an  entire  gown,  were  bordered  and  ruffled  with 
the  same  embroidery.  The  amount  and  beauty 
of  specimens  which  still  exist  after  the  lapse  of 
nearly  a  century  is  quite  wonderful.  Small 
articles,  like  collars,  capes  and  pelerines,  were 
almost  entirely  covered  with  the  most  exquisite 
tracery  of  leaf  and  flower,  a  perfect  frostwork  of 
delicate  stitchery,  with  patches  of  lacework  intro- 
duced in  spaces  of  the  design. 

The  designs  were  seldom,  almost  never,  original, 
being  nearly  always  copied  directly  from  what 

[85] 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

was  called  "boughten  work,"  to  distinguish  it 
from  that  which  was  produced  at  home. 

Many  beautiful  and  skillful  stitches  were  used  in 
this  form  of  work.  Lace  stitches,  made  with  bod- 
kins or  "piercers,"  or  darning  needles  of  sufficient 
size  to  make  perforations,  were  skillfully  rimmed 
and  joined  together  in  patterns  by  finer  stitches, 
and  open  borders,  and  hemstitching,  and  dainty 
inventions  of  all  kinds,  for  the  embellishment  of 
the  fabrics  upon  which  they  were  wrought. 

With  these  materials  and  these  methods  most 
of  the  women  of  the  different  sections  of  the 
country  busied  themselves  from  a  period  be- 
ginning probably  about  1710  and  extending  to 
1840,  and  it  is  safe  to  say,  notwithstanding  the 
apparent  simplicity  of  life  between  those  dates, 
that  at  no  period  in  the  history  of  woman  was 
as  much  time  and  consummate  skill  bestowed 
upon  wearing  apparel.  Many  a  young  girl  of 
the  day  embroidered  her  own  wedding  dress,  and 
during  the  months  or  years  of  its  preparation 
suffered  and  enjoyed  the  same  ambition  which 
goes  on  in  the  present,  to  the  acquirement  of  some 
wonder  of  French  composition,  or  costly  ornament 
of  point  lace  and  pearls. 

[86] 


Courtesy  Metropolitan  Museum  of  Art  Courtesy  Mrs.  Isaac  Pierson.  Canandaigua,  N.  Y. 

Left    — BABY'S  CAP  White  mull,  with  eyelet  embroidery.     Nineteenth  century  American. 
Right  —  BABY'S  CAP  Embroidered  mulL     1825. 


•       1 


•      '  -^ 

~  ^jjjiA.  • ;  '  x  -  ~   •  •^p^j^y 

A 


Courtesy  Metropolitan  Museum  of  Art 
COLLAR  of  white  embroidered  muslin.     Nineteenth  century  American. 


MORAVIAN   WORK 


Everything  was  embroidered.  The  tender, 
downy  head  of  the  newly  born  baby  was  covered 
with  a  cap  of  delicatest  material  incrusted  to  hard- 
ness with  needlework.  The  baby's  caps  of  the 
period  are  a  perfect  chapter  of  human  emotions; 
mother-love,  emulation,  pride,  and  declaration  of 
family  or  personal  position  are  skillfully  expressed 
in  a  multiplicity  of  decorative  stitches.  A  six-foot 
length  of  baptismal  robe  carried  for  half  its 
length  the  same  elaborate  stitchery.  Long  deli- 
cate ruffles  were  edged  with  double  rows  of 
scallops.  Double  and  triple  collars  and  "  pelerines  " 
of  muslin  were  to  be  found  in  the  hands  of  all 
women  of  high  or  low  degree.  Articles  of  wearing 
apparel  were  done  upon  a  soft  fine  muslin  called 
mull,  breadths  of  which  were  embroidered  for 
skirts,  lengths  of  it  were  scalloped  and  embroid- 
ered for  flounces,  and  hand-lengths  of  it  were 
done  for  the  short  waists  and  sleeves  of  the  pretty 
Colonial  gowns  worn  by  our  delicate  ancestresses. 
One  of  these  gowns,  stretched  to  its  widest,  would 
hardly  cover  a  front  breadth  of  the  habit  of  one 
of  our  well-nurtured  athletic  girls  of  the  present, 
and  the  athletic  girl  can  show  no  such  handi- 
work as  this. 

7  [87] 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

Beautiful  embroidery  it  was  that  was  lavished 
upon  muslin  gowns,  baby's  caps  and  long,  long 
robes,  and  upon  aprons,  pelerines  and  capes. 
Over  stitch  instead  of  tent  stitch  was  the  order 
of  the  day.  "Tent  stitch  and  the  use  of  the 
globes"  was  no  longer  advertised  as  a  part  of 
school  routine.  Instead  of  this,  there  were  the 
most  delicate  overstitches  and  multitudinous  lace- 
stitches  which  we  nowhere  else  find,  unless  in  the 
finest  of  Asian  embroidery. 

A  large  part  of  the  eighteenth  and  the  first 
quarter  of  the  nineteenth  century  was  a  period  of 
remarkable  skill  in  all  kinds  of  stitchery.  It  was 
not  confined  to  embroidery,  but  was  also  applied 
to  all  varieties  of  domestic  needlework.  Hem- 
stitched ruffles  were  a  part  of  masculine  as  well 
as  feminine  wear,  and  finely  stitched  and  ruffled 
shirts  for  the  head  of  the  household  were  quite 
as  necessary  to  the  family  dignity  as  embroidered 
gowns  and  caps  for  its  feminine  members. 

It  would  be  difficult  to  enumerate  all  the  uses  to 
which  the  national  perfection  of  needle  dexterity 
was  put.  It  was,  indeed,  a  national  dexterity,  for 
although  its  application  was  widely  different  in  the 
eastern  and  southern  states,  the  two  schools  of 

[88] 


••ta 

Courtesy  of  Bergen  County  Historical  Society,  Hacktnsack,  N.  J. 
EMBROIDERED  SILK  WEDDING  WAISTCOAT,  1829.    From  the  Westervelt  collection. 


Courtesy  of  Bergen  County  Historical  Society,  Hackensack,  N.  J. 


EMBROIDERED  WAIST  OF  A  BABY  DRESS.  1850.    From  the  collection 
of  Mrs.  Geoige  Coe. 


MORAVIAN  WORK 


needlework,  as  we  may  term  them,  met  and  mingled 
to  a  common  practice  of  both  methods  in  the 
middle  states. 

Perhaps  one  may  account  for  the  prevalence 
of  this  kind  of  work,  as  it  existed  at  a  period  of 
very  limited  education  or  literary  pursuits  among 
women.  Domestic  life  was  woman's  kingdom, 
and  needlework  was  one  of  its  chief  conditions. 
But  whatever  cause  or  causes  stimulated  the 
vogue  of  this  variety  of  embroidery,  we  find  it  was 
universal  among  rich  and  poor,  in  city  and  coun- 
try, for  nearly  three-quarters  of  a  century.  The 
narrow  roll  of  muslin,  for  scalloped  flounces  and 
ruffling,  and  the  skeins  of  French  cotton  went 
everywhere  with  girls  and  women,  except  to 
church  and  to  ceremonious  functions  where  men 
were  included.  Needlework  was  far  more  than 
an  interest,  it  was  an  occupation. 

The  varieties  of  tambour  work  and  open 
stitchery  of  various  ornamental  kinds  were  possible 
for  all  capacities.  It  was  a  general  form  of  fine 
needlework,  happily  available  to  women  of  the 
farmhouse,  as  well  as  of  the  mansion,  and  its 
exceeding  precision  and  beauty  gave  a  character 
to  the  purely  utilitarian  stitchery  of  the  day 

[89] 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

which  has  made  a  high  standard  for  succeeding 
generations.  The  hemstitched  ruffles  of  shirts, 
the  stitched  plaits  of  simpler  ones,  the  button- 
holed triangles  at  the  intersection  of  seams — all 
these  practically  unknown  to  modern  construc- 
tion— were  probably  the  result  of  the  skillful 
and  careful  needlework  ornamentation  of  simple 
fabrics. 

As  an  occupation,  French  embroidery  practi- 
cally displaced  the  making  of  cabinet  pictures  of 
graceful  ladies  in  scant  satin  gowns  which  had 
occupied  the  embroidery  frame,  or  decorated 
drawing-room  walls.  Flowers  ceased  to  blossom 
upon  pincushions,  and  the  engrossing  and  preva- 
lent occupation  of  needlework  was  entirely  devoted 
to  personal  wear. 

At  this  period,  however,  ships  were  coming  into 
Boston  and  other  eastern  ports  almost  daily  or 
weekly,  instead  of  at  intervals  of  weary  months. 
Ships  were  going  to  and  returning  from  China 
and  the  Indies  and  the  islands  of  the  sea,  laden 
on  their  return  voyages  not  only  with  spices  and 
liquors  and  sweets  of  the  southern  world,  but 
with  satins  and  velvets  and  silks  and  prints,  and 
delicately  printed  muslins  and  cambrics;  and  the 

[90] 


Courtesy  of  Mrs.  A.  S.  Hewitt 
EMBROIDERY  ON  NET.    Border  for  the  front  of  a  cap  made  about  1820. 


Courtesy  of  Metropolitan  Museum  of  Art,  New 
VEIL  (unfinished)  hand  run  on  machine-made  net.    American  nineteenth  century. 


MORAVIAN   WORK 


fair  linen  and  cotton  flosses  disappeared  from 
the  hands  of  needlewomen.  Manufacturers  had 
brought  their  looms  to  weave  designs  into  the 
fabrics  they  produced  and  to  simulate  the  work 
of  the  needle  in  a  way  which  made  one  feel  that 
the  very  spindles  thought  and  wrought  with 
conscious  love  of  beauty. 

The  larger  demands  of  luxurious  living  in- 
creased also  the  necessary  work  of  the  needle,  and 
while  the  looms  of  France  and  Switzerland  were 
busy  weaving  broidered  stuffs,  the  needles  of 
sewing  women  were  kept  at  work  fashioning  the 
necessary  garments  of  the  millions  of  playing  and 
working  human  beings.  It  was  the  era  which 
gave  birth  to  the  "Song  of  the  Shirt,"  a  day  of 
personal  and  exacting  practice. 

Lacework 

The  disappearance  of  the  practice  of  French 
embroidery  was  as  sudden  as  the  dropping  of  a 
theater  curtain,  but  a  coexistent  art  called 
Spanish  lacework  lingered  long  after  muslin  em- 
broidery had  ceased  to  be.  It  was  chiefly  used  in 
the  elaboration  of  shawls,  and  large  lace  veils, 
which  were  a  very  graceful  addition  to  Colonial 

[91] 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

and  early  American  costume.  There  is  no  diffi- 
culty in  tracing  this  kind  of  decorative  needle- 
work. It  came  from  Mexico  into  New  Orleans, 
and  from  there,  by  various  secrets  of  locomotion, 
spread  along  the  southern  states. 

The  veils  were  yard  squares  of  delicate  white 
or  black  lace,  heavily  bordered  and  lightly  spotted 
with  flowers,  while  the  shawls  were  sometimes 
nearly  double  that  size,  and  of  much  heavier 
lace,  as  they  had  need  to  be,  to  carry  the 
wealth  of  decorative  darning  lavished  upon 
them. 

The  design  was  always  a  foliated  one,  generally 
proceeding  from  a  common  center,  representing  a 
basket  or  a  knot  of  ribbon,  which  confined  the 
branching  forms  to  the  point  of  departure.  The 
edges  were  heavily  scalloped,  with  an  extension  of 
the  ornamentation  which  included  a  rose  or  leaf 
for  the  filling  of  every  scallop.  The  centers  of 
flowers,  and  even  of  leaves,  were  often  filled  with 
beautiful  variations  of  lace  stitches  worked  into 
the  meshes  of  the  ground,  and  were  very  curious 
and  interesting. 

Darning  with  flosses  upon  both  white  and 
black  bobbinet,  or  silk  net,  was  a  very  common 

[92] 


Courtesy  of  Bergen  County  Historical  Society,  Hackensack,  AT.  J. 
LACE  WEDDING  VEIL,  36x40  inches,  used  in  1806.    From  the  collection  of  Mrs.  Charles  H.  Loner. 


Courtesy  of  Bergen  County  Historical  Society,  Hackensack,  N.  J. 

HOMESPUN  LINEN  NEEDLEWORK  called  "Benewacka"  bv  the  Dutch.  The  threads  were  drawn  and 

then  whipped  into  a  net  on  which  the  design  was  darned  with  linen.     Made  about   1800  and   used 

in  the  end  of  linen  pillow  cases. 


MORAVIAN   WORK 


form  of  the  art,  and  veils  of  white  with  seed  or 
all-over  designs  darned  in  white  silk  floss,  may  be 
called  the  "personal  needlework"  of  the  period, 
and  some  of  the  shawls  were  superb  stretches  of 
design  and  stitching.  This  art,  although  so 
beautiful  in  effect,  demanded  very  little  of  the 
skill  necessary  to  the  preceding  methods  of  em- 
broidery. The  lace  was  simply  stretched  or 
basted  over  paper  or  white  cloth,  upon  which  the 
design  was  heavily  traced  in  ink;  the  spaces  which 
were  to  be  solidly  filled  were  sometimes  covered 
with  a  shading  of  red  chalk,  and  when  this  was 
done,  it  was  a  matter  of  simple  running  over  and 
under  the  meshes  of  the  net,  in  directions  indi- 
cated by  the  shape  of  the  leaf  or  flower.  The 
work  could  be  heavier  or  lighter,  according  to 
the  design  and  size  or  weight  of  the  flosses  used. 
I  have  seen  a  wedding  veil  worked  upon  a  beauti- 
ful white  silk  net,  carrying  a  sprinkling  of  orange 
flowers,  darned  with  white  silk  flosses,  and  a 
heavy  wreath  around  the  border.  Certainly  no 
veil  of  priceless  point  lace  could  be  so  etherially 
beautiful  as  was  this  relic  of  the  past,  and  certainly 
no  commercial  product,  however  costly,  could 
carry  in  its  transparent  folds  the  sentiment  of 

[93] 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

such  a  bridal  veil,  wrought  in  love  by  the  bride 
who  was  to  wear  it. 

I  have  seen  one  beautiful  shawl,  where  the 
entire  design  was  done  in  shining  silver-white 
flosses,  upon  a  ground  of  black  net,  with  the 
effect  of  a  disappearance  of  the  background,  the 
wreaths  and  groups  of  flowers  seeming  to  float 
around  the  figure  of  the  wearer. 

In  one  or  two  instances,  also,  I  have  seen 
shawls  in  varicolored  flosses  producing  a  silvery 
mass  of  ornamentation  which  was  most  effective, 
but  they  were  experiments  which  evidently  did 
not  commend  themselves  to  North  American 

taste. 

The  same  method  of  darning  was  used  upon 
what  was  then  called,  "bobbinet  footing,"  narrow 
lengths  of  bobbinet  lace  which  were  extensively 
used  as  ruffles  for  caps  and  trimming  and  garniture 
of  capes  and  various  articles  of  personal  wear. 

Cap  bodies  were  also  worked  in  this  method;  in 
fact,  the  decorative  treatment  of  caps  must  have 
been  a  trying  question.  The  dignity  of  the 
married  woman  depended  somewhat  upon  the 
size  of  the  cap  she  wore,  and  it  was  as  necessary 
to  convention  that  the  crow-black  locks  of  the 

[94] 


MORAVIAN   WORK 


matron  of  twenty-five  should  be  hidden,  as  that 
the  scant  locks  of  sixty  should  be  decently 
shrouded. 

Insertings  of  darned  footing,  alternating  with 
bands  of  muslin,  were  largely  used  in  the  construc- 
tion of  gowns,  and,  in  short,  this  style  of  needle- 
work, while  not  as  universal  or  absorbing  as 
French  embroidery,  continued  longer  in  vogue 
and  perhaps  amused  or  solaced  some  who  had 
little  skill  or  time  for  the  more  exacting  methods 
of  embroidery. 


CHAPTER  V    A    BERLIN  WOOL- 
WORK 

IT  surprises  us  in  these  latter  days  of  demand 
for  the  best  conditions  in  the  prosecution  of 
decorative  work,   that  it  should  have  lived 
at  all  through  the  days  of  existence  in  one- 
roomed  log  cabins  of  early  settlers  and  the  con- 
flicting demands  of  pioneer  life.    It  survived  them 
all,  and  the  little,  fast-arriving  Puritan  children 
were  taught  their  stitches  as  religiously  as  their 
commandments ;    and    so   American    embroidery 
grew  to  be  an  art  which  has  enriched  the  past 
and  future  of  its  executants. 

After  the  two  periods  of  French  and  Spanish 
needlework  passed  by,  there  appeared  what  was 
known  as  Berlin  woolwork.  Those  who  in  earlier 
times  were  devoted  to  fine  embroidery  solaced 
their  idleness  with  this  new  work — certainly  a  poor 
substitute  for  the  beautiful  embroidery  of  the 
preceding  generation,  but  answering  the  purpose 
of  traditional  employment  for  the  leisure  class. 
This  came  into  vogue  and  was  rather  extensively 
used  for  coverings  of  screens,  chairs,  sofas,  foot- 
stools and  the  various  specimens  of  household 

[96] 


BERLIN   WOOLWORK 


furniture  made  by  workmen  who  had  served  with 
Adam,  Chippendale  and  Sheraton,  and  who  had 
brought  books  of  patterns  with  them  to  the 
prosperous,  growing  market  of  the  New  World. 
Berlin  woolwork  was  a  method  of  cross-stitch 
upon  canvas  in  colored  wools  or  silks — in  fact,  an 
extension  of  sampler  methods  into  pictures  and 
screens,  or  the  more  utilitarian  chair  and  sofa 
covers.  It  was  sometimes  varied  by  using  broad- 
cloth or  velvet  as  a  foundation,  the  canvas  threads 
being  drawn  out  after  the  picture  was  complete. 
We  occasionally  find  entire  sets  of  beautiful  old 
mahogany  chairs,  with  cushions  of  cross-stitch 
embroidery,  the  subjects  ranging  over  every- 
thing in  the  animal  or  vegetable  world,  so  that 
one  might  sit  in  turn  upon  horses,  bead-eyed 
and  curled  lap  dogs,  or  wreaths  of  lilies  and 
roses. 

Occasionally,  also,  a  glassed  and  framed  picture 
of  elaborate  design  and  beautiful  workmanship  is 
seen,  but  as  a  rule  it  must  be  confessed  that  in 
America  this  method  of  embroidery,  as  an  art, 
failed  to  achieve  dignity.  This  was  not  in  the 
least  owing  to  the  actual  technique  of  the  process, 
since  beautiful  tapestries  have  been  accomplished, 

197] 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

taking  canvas  as  a  medium  and  foundation  for  a 
dexterous  use  of  design  and  color. 

The  square  blocks  of  the  canvas  stitch  are  no 
more  objectionable  in  an  art  process  than  the 
block  of  enamel  of  which  priceless  mosaics  are 
made,  but  one  can  easily  see  that  if  every  design 
for  mosaic  work  could  be  indefinitely  reproduced  and 
sold  by  the  thousands,  with  numbered  and  colored 
blocks  of  glass,  something — we  hardly  know  what — 
would  be  lost  in  even  the  most  exact  reproductions. 

Original  design,  however  simple,  is  the  expres- 
sion of  a  thought,  and  passes  directly  from  the 
mind  of  the  originator  to  the  material  upon  which 
it  is  expressed;  but  when  the  design  becomes  an 
article  of  commercial  supply  it  loses  in  interest, 
and  if  the  process  of  production  is  simple,  requir- 
ing little  thought  and  skill,  the  work  also  fails 
to  call  out  in  us  the  reverence  we  willingly  accord 
to  skillful  and  painstaking  embroidery. 

Yet  we  must  acknowledge  there  are  many 
examples  of  Berlin  woolwork  which  possess  the 
merits  of  beautiful  color  and  exact  and  even 
workmanship.  Some  of  them  are  done  upon  the 
finest  of  canvas  with  silks  of  exquisite  shadings, 
and  where  figures  are  represented  the  faces  are 

[98] 


Courtesy  of  Brooklyn  Museum 
BED  HANGING  of  polychrome  cross-stitch  appliqued  on  blue  woolen  ground. 


Courtesy  of  the  Edgewater  Tapestry  Looms 
NEEDLEPOINT  SCREEN  made  in  fine  and  coarse  point.    Single  cross  stitch. 


BERLIN   WOOLWORK 


worked  with  silk  in  "single  stitch,"  which  means 
one  crossing  of  the  canvas  instead  of  two,  as  in 
ordinary  cross-stitch.  The  latter  was  of  course 
better  suited  for  furniture  coverings,  both  in 
strength  and  quality  of  surface,  while  the  method 
of  single  stitch  succeeded  in  presenting  a  smooth 
and  well-shaded  surface,  sufficiently  like  a  painted 
one  to  stand  for  a  picture.  Indeed,  veritable 
pictures  were  produced  in  this  method  and  were 
effective  and  interesting.  In  these  specimens  the 
faces  and  hands,  while  worked  in  the  same  cross- 
stitch,  were  varied  by  being  done  on  a  single 
crossing  of  the  canvas  with  one  stitch,  while  the 
costumes  and  accessories  of  the  picture  were 
done  over  the  larger  square  of  two  threads  of  the 
canvas,  with  the  double  crossing  of  the  stitch. 

The  faces  were,  in  some  cases,  still  further 
differentiated  by  being  wrought  in  silk  instead  of 
wool  threads. 

The  embroidered  chair  and  sofa  covers  had 
quite  the  effect  of  tapestries,  and  were  far  better 
than  a  not  uncommon  variation  of  the  same 
needlework,  where  the  broadcloth  or  velvet 
background  held  the  embroidery. 

The  designs  were  copied  from  patterns  printed 

[991 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

in  color  upon  cross-ruled  paper,  and  consisted  of 
bunches  of  flowers  of  various  sorts,  or  pictures 
of  dogs,  and  horses,  and  birds.  A  white  lap  dog 
worked  upon  a  dark  background  was  the  favorite 
design  for  a  footstool,  and  this  small  object 
tapered  out  the  existence  of  decorative  cross- 
stitch,  until  it  grew  to  be  in  use  only  as  a  deco- 
ration for  toilet  slippers.  The  final  end  of  this 
style  of  work  was  long  deferred  on  account  of  the 
fact  that  a  pair  of  cloth  slippers,  embroidered  by 
the  hands  of  some  affectionate  girl  or  doting 
woman,  was  a  token  which  was  not  too  unusual 
to  cany  inconvenient  significance.  It  might 
mean  much  or  little,  much  tenderness  or  affection, 
or  a  work  of  idleness  tinctured  with  sentiment. 

The  mechanical  and  commercial  effect  of  this 
stitchery  discouraged  its  use;  its  printed  patterns 
and  the  regularity  of  its  counted  stitches  giving 
neither  provocation  nor  scope  to  originality  of 
thought  or  design.  This  was  not  the  fault  of  the 
stitch  itself,  since  "cross-stitch"  was  the  first 
form  of  needle  decoration.  It  is,  in  fact,  the 
A  B  C  of  all  decorative  stitchery,  the  method 
evolved  by  all  primitive  races  except  the  American 

Indian.     It  followed,  more  or  less  closely,  the 

liool 


BERLIN   WOOL  WORK 


development  of  the  art  of  weaving.  When  this 
had  passed  from  the  weaving  together  of  osiers 
into  mats  or  baskets,  and  had  reached  the  stage 
of  the  weaving  of  hair  and  vegetable  fiber  into 
cloth,  the  decoration  of  such  cloth  with  inde- 
pendent colored  fiber  was  the  next  step  in  the 
creation  of  values,  and,  naturally,  the  form  of 
decorative  stitches  followed  the  lines  of  weaving. 
Simple  as  was  its  evolution,  and  its  preliminary 
use,  cross-stitch  has  a  past  which  entitles  it  to 
reverence.  With  many  races  it  has  remained  a 
habitual  form  of  expression,  and,  as  in  Moorish 
and  Algerian  work,  is  carried  to  a  refinement  of 
beauty  which  would  seem  beyond  so  simple  a 
method.  It  has  given  form  to  a  lasting  style  of 
design,  to  geometrical  borders,  which  have  survived 
races  and  periods  of  history,  and  still  remain  an 
underlying  part  of  the  world  of  decorative  linens. 

It  is  interesting  to  note  that  it  had  no  place  in 
aboriginal  embroidery,  and  marks  its  creation  as 
following  the  art  of  weaving.  It  is  a  long  step 
from  this  traditional  past  of  its  origin  to  the  short 
past  of  the  stitchery  of  America,  where  the  little 
fingers  of  small  Puritan  maids  followed  the  lines 
evolved  by  the  generations  of  the  earlier  world. 

I  ioil 


X-VX  A.  JL  A.    V    0- 

W 


CHAPTER  VI  &  REVIVAL  OF 
EMBROIDERY,  AND  THE  FOUND- 
ING OF  THE  SOCIETY  OF  DECO- 
RATIVE ART 

rHEN  French  needlework  had  had  its 
day,  and  the  evanescent  life  of  Berlin 
woolwork  had  passed,  for  a  period 
of  half  a  century  needlework  ceased 
to  flourish  in  America.  Indeed,  the  art  seemed  to 
have  died  out  root  and  branch,  and  only  necessary 
and  utilitarian  needlework  was  practiced.  It 
seems  strange,  after  all  the  wonderful  triumphs 
of  the  needle  in  earlier  years,  that  for  the  succeed- 
ing half  or  three-quarters  of  a  century  needle- 
work as  an  art  should  actually  have  ceased  to 
be.  It  had  died,  branch  and  stem  and  root, 
vanished  as  if  it  had  never  been.  During  at  least 
half  a  century  we  were  a  people  without  deco- 
rative needlework  art  in  any  form.  The  eyes 
and  thoughts  of  women  were  turned  in  other 
directions. 

Of  course  there  is  always  a  reason  for  a  change 
in  public  taste,  something  in  the  development 
of  the  time  leads  and  governs  every  trend  of 

[102] 


REVIVAL   OF   EMBROIDERY 


popular  thought.  It  may  be  the  attraction  of 
new  inventions,  or  the  perfection  of  new  processes, 
or  even,  and  this  is  not  uncommon,  the  charm  and 
fascination  of  some  rare  personality,  whose  ruling 
is  absolute  in  its  own  immediate  vicinity,  and 
whose  example  spreads  like  circles  in  water  far 
and  far  beyond  the  immediate  personal  influence. 
We  cannot  trace  this  apparent  dearth  of  the  art 
to  one  particular  cause,  we  only  know  that  in 
America  the  practice  and  study  of  music  succeeded 
to  its  place  in  almost  every  household.  The 
needle,  that  honored  implement  of  woman,  bade 
fair  to  be  a  thing  almost  of  tradition,  something 
which  would  be  in  time  relegated  to  museums  and 
collections,  to  be  studied  historically,  as  we  study 
the  implements  of  the  Stone  Age,  and  other  pre- 
historic periods. 

I  remember  an  amusing  story  told  by  a  Balti- 
more friend,  not  given  to  the  manufacture  of 
instances,  that  during  those  years  of  dearth  soon 
after  the  Civil  War  she  was  visiting  a  lovely 
southern  family  who  had  lived  through  the  days 
of  privation.  One  day  there  arose  a  great  cry  and 
disturbance  in  the  house,  which  turned  out  to  be 

a  quest  for  the  needle,  where  was   the  needle. 
8  [  103  ] 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

Nobody  could  find  it,  although  it  could  be  proved 
that  at  a  certain  date  it  had  been  quilted  into 
its  accustomed  place  on  the  edge  of  the  drawing- 
room  curtain  of  the  east  window.  Finally  it  was 
found  on  the  wrong  curtain,  minus  the  point,  and 
this  disability  gave  rise  to  a  discussion.  Should 
it  be  taken  to  town,  and  have  the  point  renewed 
by  the  watchmaker?  This  decision  was  dis- 
couraged by  the  daughter  of  the  house,  who 
related  that  the  last  time  she  had  taken  it  for  the 
same  purpose,  the  watchmaker  had  said  to  her, 
"Miss  Cassy,  I  have  put  a  point  on  that  needle 
three  times,  and  I  would  seriously  advise  you  to 
buy  a  new  one." 

It  was  only  in  America  that  the  needle  had 
ceased  to  be  an  active  implement.  In  England 
it  had  never  been  so  constantly  or  feverishly 
employed.  For  the  second  time  in  its  long  history, 
its  work  became  purely  personal.  The  same 
necessity  which  impressed  itself  upon  the  poor 
little  mother  of  mankind,  when  she  sought  among 
the  fig  leaves  for  wherewithal  to  clothe  herself, 
was  upon  the  domestic  woman,  who  sewed  cloth 
into  skirts  instead  of  vegetable  fiber  into  aprons. 

It  is  curious  to  contrast  the  effect  of  this  loss  of 

[104] 


Courtesy  Metropolitan  Museum  of  Art 
Left   —EMBROIDERED  MITS 

Riaht  —  WHITE  COTTON  VEST  embroidered  in  colors.    Eighteenth-nineteenth  century  American. 


Courtesy  Metropolitan  Museum  of  Art 
WHITE  MULL  embroidered  in  colors.     Eighteenth-nineteenth  century  American. 


EMBROIDERED  VALANCE,  part  of  set  and  spread  for  high-post  bedstead.  1788.     Worked  in  crewels 
on  India  cotton,  by  Mrs.  Gideon  Granger.  Canandaigua,  New  York. 


REVIVAL   OF  EMBROIDERY 


embroidery  in  the  two  countries,  England  and 
America.  Doubtless  there  were  other  reasons 
than  the  lost  popularity  of  needlework  as  an 
art,  that  in  England  it  should  have  resulted  in 
the  life  or  death  practice  of  necessary  needlework, 
and  in  America,  that  the  facile  fingers  of  woman 
simply  turned  to  the  ivory  keys  of  the  piano  for 
occupation.  But  the  fact  remains  that  starvation 
threatened  the  woman  of  one  country,  while  in 
the  other  they  were  practicing  scales.  In  England 
it  was  a  period  of  stress  and  strain,  of  veritable 
"work  for  a  living,"  the  period  of  "The  Song  of 
the  Shirt."  Happily,  in  this  blessed  land,  where 
hunger  was  unknown,  we  were  not  conscious  of 
its  terrors,  and  perhaps  hardly  knew  why  the 
"cambric  needle"  and  the  darning  needle  were  the 
only  ones  in  the  market.  Embroidery  needles 
had  "gone  out."  Then  came  the  relief  of  the 
sewing  machine,  born  in  America,  where  it  was 
scarcely  needed,  but  speedily  flying  across  the 
ocean  to  its  life-saving  work  in  England,  where 
the  tragedy  of  the  poor  seamstress  was  on  the 
stage  of  life.  Like  many  another  form  of  relief, 
it  was  not  entirely  adequate  to  the  situation. 
Its  first  effect  was  to  create  a  need  of  remunerative 

[105] 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

work.  The  sewing  machine  took  upon  itself  the 
toil  of  the  seamstress,  but  it  left  the  seamstress 
idle  and  hungry.  This  was  a  new  and  even 
darker  situation  than  the  last,  but  Englishwomen 
came  to  the  rescue  with  a  resuscitated  form  of 
needleworks  and  embroidery  tiptoed  upon  the 
empty  stage,  new  garments  covering  her  ancient 
form,  and  was  welcomed  with  universal  acclaim. 

Most  cultivated  and  fortunate  Englishwomen 
had  a  certain  knowledge  of  art  and  were  eager  to 
put  all  of  their  uncoined  effort  at  the  service  of 
that  body  of  unhappy  women,  who,  without 
money,  had  the  culture  which  goes  with  the  use 
and  possession  of  money.  These  unfortunate 
sisters,  who  were  rather  malodorously  called  de- 
cayed gentlewomen,  became  eager  and  petted 
pupils  of  a  new  and  popular  organization  called 
the  South  Kensington  School.  Its  peculiar  claims 
upon  English  society  gave  it  from  the  first  the 
help  of  the  most  advanced  and  intelligent  artistic 
assistance.  The  result  of  this  was  not  only  a 
resuscitation  of  old  methods  of  embroidery,  but 
the  great  gain  to  the  school,  or  society,  of  design 
and  criticism  of  such  men  as  Burne- Jones,  Walter 
Crane,  and  William  Morris. 

[106] 


REVIVAL   OF  EMBROIDERY 


It  was  with  this  vogue  that  it  appeared  in 
America,  and  attracted  the  attention  of  those  who 
were  afterward  to  be  interested  in  the  formation 
of  a  society  which  was  founded  for  almost  identi- 
cal purposes.  Not  indeed  to  prevent  starvation 
of  body,  but  to  comfort  the  souls  of  women  who 
pined  for  independence,  who  did  not  care  to 
indulge  in  luxuries  which  fathers  and  brothers 
and  husbands  found  it  hard  to  supply.  So, 
from  what  was  perhaps  a  social  and  mental, 
rather  than  a  physical,  want,  grew  the  great 
remedy  of  a  resuscitation  of  one  of  the  valuable 
arts  of  the  world,  a  woman's  art,  hers  by  right  of 
inheritance  as  well  as  peculiar  fitness. 

With  true  business  enterprise,  the  new  English 
Society  prepared  an  important  exhibit  for  our 
memorial  fair,  the  Centennial,  held  in  Phila- 
delphia to  mark  the  one-hundredth  anniversary 
of  national  independence.  This  exhibit  of  Kensing- 
ton Embroidery  all  unwittingly  sowed  the  seed 
not  only  of  great  results,  but  in  decorative  art 
worked  in  many  other  directions.  The  exhibits  of 
art  needlework  from  the  New  Kensington  School 
of  Art  in  London,  their  beauty,  novelty  and  easy 
adaptiveness,  exactly  fitted  it  to  experiment  by  all 

[1071 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

the  dreaming  forces  of  the  American  woman. 
They  were  good  needlewomen  by  inheritance  and 
sensitive  to  art  influences  by  nature,  and  the 
initiative  capacity  which  belongs  to  power  and 
feeling  enabled  them  at  once  to  seize  upon  this 
mode  of  expression  and  make  it  their  own.  It 
was  the  means  of  inaugurating  another  era  of 
true  decorative  needlework,  perfectly  adapted  to 
the  capacity  of  all  women,  and  destined  to  be 
developed  on  lines  peculiarly  national  in  charac- 
ter. The  effect  of  this  exhibit  was  not  exactly 
what  was  expected  in  the  sale  of  its  works,  and 
long  afterward,  when  discussing  this  apparent 
failure,  in  the  face  of  an  immediate  adoption  in 
America  of  the  Society's  methods  and  productions, 
I  explained  it  to  myself  and  an  English  friend,  by 
the  national  difference  in  the  race  feeling  for  art, 
and  especially  for  color. 

It  seems  to  me,  after  the  observation  and 
intimacy  of  years  with  the  growing  art  of  deco- 
ration in  this  country,  that  the  color  gift  is  a 
race  gift  with  us.  English  art-work  is  nearly 
always  characterized  by  subdued  and  modified 
harmony,  while  that  of  America  has  vivid  and 
striking  notes  which  play  upon  a  higher  key, 

[108] 


Courtesy  of  Brooklyn  Museum 
DETAIL  of  linen  coverlet  worked  in  colored  wool. 


Courtesy  of  Brooklyn  Museum 
LINEN  COVERLET  embroidered  in  Kensington  stitch  with  colored  wool. 


REVIVAL   OF  EMBROIDERY 


and  still  melt  as  softly  into  each  other  as  the 
perfect  modulations  of  the  best  English  art.  I 
was  very  conscious  of  this  during  the  year  of  my 
directorship  of  the  Woman's  Building  and  exhibits 
in  the  World's  Columbian  Fair  at  Chicago,  that 
place  of  wonderful  comparisons  of  the  art-work  of 
the  world.  I  could  nearly  always  recognize  work 
of  American  origin  by  its  singing  color-quality,  as 
different  from  the  sharp  semibarbaric  notes  of 
Oriental  art  as  from  the  minor  cadences  of  Eng- 
lish decorative  work.  But  to  return  to  the  effect 
of  the  English  exhibit  at  the  Philadelphia  Cen- 
tennial: it  was  followed  by  the  immediate  for- 
mation of  the  Society  of  Decorative  Art  in  New 
York  City,  which  became  the  parent  of  like 
societies  in  every  considerable  city  or  town  in 
the  United  States.  By  its  good  fortune  in  hav- 
ing a  president  who  belonged  by  right  of  birth, 
and  certainly  of  ability  and  achievement,  to  the 
best  of  New  York  society,  the  movement  en- 
listed the  sympathy  and  interest  of  the  influ- 
ential class  of  New  York  women,  while  there  was 
waiting  in  the  shadow  a  troop  of  able  women 
who  were  shut  out  from  the  costly  gayeties  of 
society  by  comparative  poverty,  but  connected 

[109] 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

with  it  by  friendships  and   associations,  often, 
indeed,  by  ties  of  blood. 

Embroidery  became  once  more  the  most  facile 
and  successful  of  pursuits.  Graduates  from  the 
Kensington  School  were  employed  as  teachers  in 
nearly  all  of  the  different  societies,  and  in  this 
way  every  city  became  the  center  of  this  new-old 
form  of  embroidery,  for  what  is  called  "Kensing- 
ton Embroidery"  is  in  fact  a  far-away  repetition 
of  old  triumphs  of  the  British  needle.  I  use  the 
word  "British"  advisedly,  for  it  was  when  England 
was  known  as  Britain  among  the  nations  that  her 
embroidery  was  a  thing  of  almost  priceless  value. 
In  modern  English  embroidery,  the  days  of  Queen 
Anne  have  been  the  limit  of  backward  imitation; 
and,  in  fact,  ancient  English  embroidery  was  a 
process  of  long  and  assiduous  labor,  as  well  as  of 
knowledge  and  inspiration.  Our  hurried  modern 
conditions  would  not  encourage  the  repetition  of 
the  hand-breadth  pictures  in  embroidery  of  the 
earliest  specimens,  where  countless  numbers  of 
stitches  were  lavished  upon  a  single  production. 
The  embroidered  picture  of  The  Garden  of  Eden 
described  in  chapter  four  is  a  specimen  of  the 
minute  representation.  These  specimens  are,  to 

[nol 


REVIVAL   OF  EMBROIDERY 


the  art  of  needlework,  what  the  Dutch  school  of 
painting  is  to  the  great  mural  canvases  of  the 
present  day. 

The  development  of  the  nineteenth  century  in 
America  was  only  at  first  an  exact  reflection  of 
English  methods.  The  first  thing  which  marked 
the  influence  of  national  character  and  taste  was, 
that  English  models  and  designs  almost  im- 
mediately disappeared,  only  a  few  such,  consisting 
of  those  which  had  been  given  to  the  art  by  masters 
of  design  like  Morris  and  Marcus  Ward,  were 
retained,  and  American  needlewomen  boldly  took 
to  the  representation  of  vivid  and  graceful  groups 
of  natural  flowers,  following  the  lead  of  Moravian 
practice  and  of  flower  painting,  rather  than  that 
of  decorative  design. 

As  a  natural  result,  crewels  were  soon  dis- 
carded in  favor  of  silks,  and  natural  extravagance, 
or  national  influence,  led  to  the  use  of  costly 
materials  instead  of  the  linens  of  English  choice 
and  preference.  So  the  old  flower  embroidery  of 
Bethlehem  had  a  second  birth.  American  girl 
art-students  soon  found  their  opportunity  in  the 
creation  of  applied  design,  and  before  embroidery 
had  ceased  to  be  a  matter  of  representation  of 

[ml 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

flowers  in  colored  silks,  the  flowers  grew  into 
restrained  and  appropriate  borders,  or  proper  and 
correct  space  decoration,  and  the  day  of  women 
designers  for  manufacturers  had  come. 

The  circulars  of  the  first  Society  of  Decorative 
Art  were  not  only  comprehensive,  but  were 
ambitious.  Its  objects  were  set  forth  as  follows: 

1.  To  encourage  profitable  industries  among  women  who 
possess  artistic  talent,  and  to  furnish  a  standard  of 
excellence  and  a  market  for  their  work. 

2.  To  accumulate  and  distribute  information  concerning 
the  various  art  industries  which  have  been  found  re- 
munerative in  other  countries,  and  to  form  classes  in 
Art  Needlework. 

3.  To   establish   rooms   for   the   exhibition   and   sale   of 
Sculptures,  Paintings,  Wood  Carvings,  Paintings  upon 
Slate,    Porcelain    and    Pottery,    Lacework,    Art    and 
Ecclesiastical  Needlework,    Tapestries   and   Hangings, 
and,  in  short,  decorative  work  of  any  description,  done 
by  women,  and  of  sufficient  excellence  to  meet  the 
recently  stimulated  demand  for  such  work. 

4.  To   form   Auxiliary   Committees   in   other   cities   and 
towns  of  the  United  States,  which  committees  shall 
receive  and  pronounce  upon  work  produced  in,  or  in 
the  vicinity  of,  such  places,  and  which,  if  approved  by 
them,  may  be  consigned  to  the  salesrooms  in  New 
York. 

5.  To  make  connections  with  potteries,  by  which  desirable 
forms  for  decoration,   or  original  designs  for  special 

[112] 


REVIVAL   OF  EMBROIDERY 


orders,  may  be  procured,  and  with  manufacturers  and 
importers  of  the  various  materials  used  in  art  work, 
by  which  artists  may  profit. 

6.  To  endeavor  to  obtain  orders  from  dealers  in  China, 
Cabinet  Work,  or  articles  belonging  to  Household  Art 
throughout  the  United  States. 

7.  To  induce  each  worker  thoroughly  to  master  the  de- 
tails of  one  variety  of  decoration,  and  endeavor  to  make 
for  her  work  a  reputation  of  commercial  value. 

The  Society  meets  an  actual  want  in  the  community  by 
furnishing  a  place  where  orders  can  be  given  directly  to 
the  artist  for  any  kind  of  art  or  decorative  work  on  exhi- 
bition. 

It  is  believed  that,  by  the  encouragement  of  this  Society, 
the  large  amount  of  work  done  by  those  who  do  not  make 
it  a  profession  will  be  brought  to  the  notice  of  buyers 
outside  a  limited  circle  of  friends.  The  aggregate  of  this 
work  is  large,  and  when  directed  into  remunerative 
channels  will  prove  a  very  important  department  of 
industry. 

The  necessary  expenses  of  the  Society  for  the  first,  and 
possibly  the  second,  year  will  be  defrayed  by  a  member- 
ship fee  of  Five  Dollars,  as  well  as  by  donations ;  but  after 
that  time  it  is  expected  that  all  expenses  will  be  met  by 
commissions  upon  the  sale  of  articles  consigned  to  it. 

The  contributions  of  all  women  artists  of  acknowledged 
ability  are  earnestly  requested.  By  their  co-operation  it 
is  intended  that  a  high  standard  of  excellence  shall  be 
established  in  what  is  offered  to  the  public,  and,  by  seeing 
truly  artistic  decorative  work,  it  is  hoped  many  women 

[1131 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

who  have  found  the  painting  of  pictures  unremunerative 
may  turn  their  efforts  in  more  practical  directions. 

All  work  approved  by  the  Committee  of  Examination 
will  be  attractively  exhibited  without  expense  to  the 
artist,  but  in  case  of  sale  a  commission  of  10  per  cent  will 
be  charged  upon  the  price  received. 

There  was  good  teaching  from  the  first,  but 
very  independent  judgment,  and  it  was  not  long 
before  the  more  liberal  and  less  chastened  Ameri- 
can mind  followed  national  impulses.  Why,  said 
the  practical  American,  shall  we  spend  time  and 
effort  in  doing  things  which  are  not  adequate  in 
final  effect  to  the  labor  and  cost  we  bestow  upon 
them,  and  which  do  not  really  accord  with  costly 
surroundings,  and,  in  addition  to  these  detriments, 
can  and  probably  will  be  eaten  by  moths  when 
all  is  done?  The  result  of  this  interrogative 
reasoning  was  an  immediate  resort  to  satins  and 
silks  and  flosses,  wherewith  larger  and  more  im- 
portant things  than  tidies  were  created— lambre- 
quins, hangings,  bedspreads,  screens,  and  many 
other  furnishings,  all  wrought  in  exquisite  flosses, 
and  more  or  less  beautiful  in  color. 

The  institution  of  this  Society  of  Decorative 
Art  was  in  every  respect  a  timely  and  popular 

[114] 


REVIVAL  OF  EMBROIDERY 


movement.  It  followed  the  example  of  the 
English  Society  in  making  needlework  the  chief 
object  of  instruction.  Our  artists  became  in- 
terested in  the  matter  of  design,  as  the  English 
artists  had  been,  and  under  their  influence  the 
scope  of  embroidery  was  much  enlarged.  I  re- 
member the  first  contribution  which  indicated 
original  talent  was  a  piece  of  needlework  by 
Mrs.  W.  S.  Hoyt  of  Pelham,  which  was  peculiarly 
ingenious,  making  a  curious  link  between  the 
cross-stitch  tapestries  of  the  German  school  and 
the  woven  tapestries  of  France.  This  needle- 
work was  done  upon  a  fabric  which  imitated  the 
corded  texture  of  tapestries,  and  was  stamped  in  a 
design  which  carried  the  color  and  idea  of  a 
tapestry  background.  Upon  this  surface  Mrs. 
Hoyt  had  drawn  a  group  of  figures  in  mediaeval 
costumes,  afterward  working  them  in  single  cross- 
stitch  over  the  ribs  produced  by  the  filling  threads 
of  the  fabric.  The  figures  and  costumes  were 
done  in  faded  tints  which  harmonized  with  the 
background,  the  stitches  keeping  the  general 
effect  of  surface  in  the  fabric.  It  will  be  seen 
that  the  result  was  extremely  like  that  of  a 
tapestry  of  the  fifteenth  century.  This  was 

[us] 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

followed  by  an  exhibit  of  various  landscape 
pictures  of  Mrs.  Holmes  of  Boston,  a  daughter- 
in-law  of  the  poet  and  writer.  Mrs.  Holmes  had 
chosen  silks  and  bits  of  weavings  for  her  medium, 
using  them  as  a  painter  uses  colors  upon  his 
palette.  A  stretch  of  pale  blue  silk,  with  out- 
lined hills  lying  against  it,  made  for  her  a  sky  and 
background,  while  a  middle  distance  of  flossy 
white  stitches,  advancing  into  well-defined  daisies, 
brought  the  foreground  to  one's  very  feet.  Flower- 
laden  apple  branches  against  the  sky  were  lightly 
sketched  in  embroidery  stitches,  like  the  daisies. 
It  was  a  delicious  bit  of  color  and  so  well  managed 
as  to  be  as  efficient  a  wall  decoration  as  a  water 
color  picture. 

In  what  may  be  called  pictorial  art  in  textiles 
Mrs.  Holmes  was  not  alone,  although  her  work 
probably  incited  to  the  same  sort  of  experiment. 
Miss  Weld  of  Boston  sent  a  picture  made  up  in 
the  same  way,  of  a  background  of  material  which 
lent  itself  to  the  representation  of  a  field  of 
swampy  ground  where  the  spotted  leaves  of  the 
adder's  tongue,  the  yellow  water-lily,  with  its 
compact  balls,  and  the  flaming  cardinal  flower 
are  growing,  while  swamp  grasses  are  nodding 

[116] 


REVIVAL   OF   EMBROIDERY 


above.  This  was  as  good  in  its  way  as  any  sketch 
of  them  could  be,  and  affected  one  with  the 
sentiment  of  the  scene,  as  it  is  the  mission  of 
art  to  do.  Miss  Weld,  Miss  Carolina  Townshend 
of  Albany,  Mrs.  William  Hoyt  of  Pelham  and 
Mrs.  Dewey  of  New  York,  each  contributed  very 
largely  to  the  formation  of  characteristic  and 
progressive  needlework  art  in  America.  There 
were  other  individuals  whose  work  was  inciting 
many,  who  have  also,  perhaps  unknown  to  them- 
selves, helped  in  this  progress.  Indeed,  I  re- 
member many  pieces  of  embroidery,  loaned  for  the 
Bartholdi  Exhibition  of  1883,  which  would  have 
done  credit  to  any  period  of  the  art,  and  each 
piece  undoubtedly  had  its  influence. 

The  work  of  schools  or  societies  had  been  much 
less  marked  by  original  development.  During  the 
ten  years  of  their  existence  the  four  largest  so- 
cieties, those  of  New  York,  Boston,  Philadelphia 
and  Chicago,  have  been  under  the  direction  of 
English  teachers,  and  have  followed  more  or  less 
closely  the  excellencies  of  the  English  School. 
Even  in  Boston,  where,  owing  to  the  decided 
cultivation  of  art  and  the  early  introduction  of 
drawing  in  the  public  schools,  one  would  have 

[117] 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

looked  for  a  rather  characteristic  development, 
English  designs  and  English  methods  have  been 
somewhat  closely  followed. 

In  attempting  to  account  for  this  fact  one 
must  remember  that  it  is  against  the  nature  of 
associated  authority  to  follow  individual  or  original 
suggestions.  There  must  be  a  broad  and  well- 
trodden  path  for  committees  to  walk  together  in, 
and  the  track  of  the  Kensington  School  is  broad 
and  authoritative  enough  for  such  following.  The 
example  and  incitement  of  the  various  societies 
were  the  seed  of  much  good  and  progressive  art 
in  America.  In  saying  this  I  do  not  by  any 
means  confine  the  credit  of  the  growth  or  develop- 
ment of  needlework  to  this  society  alone,  for 
there  have  been  other  influences  at  work.  What 
I  mean  to  say  is  this,  that  the  other  kindred 
societies,  like  the  Woman's  Exchange,  the  Needle- 
work Societies,  the  Household  Art  Societies,  and 
the  Blue-and- White  Industries  started  from  this 
one  root,  and  are  as  much  indebted  to  the  original 
society  as  things  must  always  be  to  the  central 
thought  which  inspired  them.  Compared  with 
English  work  of  the  same  period,  they  were 
distinguished  by  a  certain  spontaneity  of  motive 

[118] 


Courtesy  of  Brooklyn  Muscat 
QUILTED  COVERLET  worked  entirely  by  hand. 


Courtesy  of  Brooklyn  Museum 


DETAIL  of  above  coverlet. 


REVIVAL  OF   EMBROIDERY 


and  a  luxuriance  of  effect,  which  has  made  these 
specimens  more  valuable  to  present  possessors, 
and  will  make  them  far  more  precious  as  heir- 
looms. This  sudden  efflorescence  of  the  art  was, 
however,  almost  in  the  hands  of  amateurs,  except 
for  the  occasional  effort  by  some  of  the  advanced 
contributors  of  the  New  York  and  Boston  societies. 

The  commercial  development  of  embroidery 
in  this  country  has  been  in  the  direction  of  em- 
broidery upon  linen,  and  in  this  line  each  and 
every  society  of  decorative  art  has  been  a  center 
of  valuable  teaching.  At  the  Columbian  Expo- 
sition, to  which  all  prominent  societies  contributed, 
the  perfection  of  design,  color  and  method,  the 
general  level  of  excellence,  was  on  the  highest 
possible  plane.  In  its  line  nothing  could  be 
better,  and  it  was  encouraging  to  see  that  it  was 
not  amateur  work,  not  a  thing  to  be  taken  up 
and  laid  down  according  to  moods  and  circum- 
stances, but  an  educated  profession  or  occupation 
for  women,  the  acquirement  of  a  knowledge 
which  might  develop  indefinitely. 

Of  course  the  trend  of  the  decorative  needle- 
work was  almost  entirely  in  the  direction  of 
stitchery  pure  and  simple,  devoted  to  table 

9  [119] 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

linen  and  luxurious  household  uses,  and  this  grew 
to  a  point  of  absolute  perfection.  Table-centers 
and  doilies  embroidered  in  colors  on  pure  white 
linen  reached  a  point  of  beauty  which  was  amaz- 
ing. When  I  saw,  at  the  World's  Columbian 
Exposition,  the  napery  of  the  world,  wrought  by 
all  races  of  women,  I  was  delighted  to  see  that 
the  line  of  linen  embroidery  which  was  the  di- 
rection of  the  common  effort  did  not  in  the  least 
surpass  the  work  sent  by  the  Decorative  Art 
societies  of  most  of  our  American  cities. 


CHAPTER   VII       A        AMERICAN 
TAPESTRY 

THE  Society  of  Decorative  Art,  has  proved 
itself  a  means  for  the  accomplishment 
of  the  two  ends  for  which  it  was  founded — 
namely,  the  fostering  and  incitement  of 
good  taste  in  needlework  and  artistic  production, 
and  the  encouragement  of  talent  in  women,  as  well 
as  providing  a  means  of  remunerative  employment 
for  their  gifts  in  this  direction. 

While  the  success  of  this  Society  was  a  source 
of  great  satisfaction  to  me,  I  had  in  my  mind 
larger  ambitions,  which,  by  its  very  philanthropic 
purposes,  could  not  be  satisfied,  ambitions  toward 
a  truly  great  American  effort  in  a  lasting  direction. 

I  therefore  allied  myself  with  a  newly  formed 
group  of  men,  all  well-known  in  their  own  lines 
of  art,  Louis  Tiffany,  famed  for  his  Stained 
Glass,  Mr.  Coleman  for  color  decoration  and  the 
use  of  textiles,  and  Mr.  De  Forest  for  carved  and 
ornamental  woodwork.  My  interests  lay  in  the 
direction  and  execution  of  embroideries.  I  can 
speak  authoritatively  as  to  the  effect  upon  it  of 
the  other  arts,  and  I  can  hardly  imagine  better 

[121] 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

conditions  for  its  development.  The  kindred  arts 
of  weaving  and  embroidery  were  carried  on  with 
those  of  stained  glass,  mural  painting,  illustration, 
and  the  other  expressions  of  art  peculiar  to  the 
different  members.  The  association  of  different 
forms  of  art  stimulated  and  developed  and  was 
the  means  of  producing  very  important  examples 
both  in  embroidery,  needle-woven  tapestries  and 
loom  weaving. 

As  I  was  the  woman  member  of  this  association 
of  artists,  it  rested  with  me  to  adapt  the  feminine 
art,  which  was  a  part  of  its  activities,  to  the  re- 
quirements of  the  association.  This  was  no  small 
task.  It  meant  the  fitting  of  any  and  every 
textile  used  in  the  furnishing  of  a  house  to  its 
use  and  place,  whether  it  might  be  curtains, 
portieres,  or  wall  coverings.  I  drew  designs  which 
would  give  my  draperies  a  framing  which  carried 
out  the  woodwork,  and  served  as  backgrounds 
for  the  desired  wreaths  and  garlands  of  em- 
broidered flowers.  I  learned  many  valuable 
lessons  of  adaptation  for  the  beautiful  embroideries 
we  produced.  The  net  holding  roses  was  a  triumph 
of  picturesque  stitchery,  and  most  acceptable 

as  placed  in  the  house  of  the  man  whose  fortunes 

[122] 


'/ 


THE  WINGED  MOON 

Designed  by  Dora  Wheeler  and  executed  in  needle-woven  tapestry  by 
The  Associated  Artists.  1883. 


AMERICAN   TAPESTRY 


depended  upon  fish,  and  many  another  of  like 
character. 

Then  one  day  appeared  Mrs.  Langtry  in  her 
then  radiance  of  beauty,  insisting  upon  a  confer- 
ence with  me  upon  the  production  of  a  set  of 
bed-hangings  which  were  intended  for  the  astonish- 
ment of  the  London  world  and  to  overshadow 
all  the  modest  and  schooled  productions  of  the 
Kensington,  when  she  herself  should  be  the 
proud  exhibitor.  She  looked  at  all  the  beautiful 
things  we  had  done  and  were  doing,  and  admired 
and  approved,  but  still  she  wanted  "something 
different,  something  unusual."  I  suggested  a 
canopy  of  our  strong,  gauze-like,  creamy  silk 
bolting-cloth,  the  tissue  used  in  flour  mills  for 
sifting  the  superfine  flour.  I  explained  that  the 
canopy  could  be  crosses  on  the  under  side  with 
loops  of  full-blown,  sunset-colored  roses,  and  the 
hanging  border  heaped  with  them.  That  there 
might  be  a  coverlet  of  bolting-cloth  lined  with 
the  delicatest  shade  of  rose-pink  satin,  sprinkled 
plentifully  with  rose  petals  fallen  from  the  wreaths 
above.  This  idea  satisfied  the  pretty  lady,  who 
seemed  to  find  great  pleasure  in  the  range  of  our 
exhibits,  our  designs  and  our  workrooms,  and  when 

[123] 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

her  order  was  completed,  she  was  triumphantly 
satisfied  with  its  beauty  and  unusualness.  The 
scattered  petals  were  true  portraits  done  from 
nature,  and  looked  as  though  they  could  be  shaken 
off  at  any  minute.  I  came  to  see  much  of  this 
beautiful  specimen  of  womanhood,  who  played  her 
part  in  the  eyes  of  the  world;  and  of  things  of 
more  lasting  importance  than  her  somewhat 
ephemeral  career,  I  should  be  tempted  to  tell 
amusing  conclusions.  She  was  an  Oriental  butter- 
fly, which  flitted  along  our  sober,  serious  by-path 
of  business  and  labor,  looking  for  honey  of  any 
sort  to  be  gathered  on  its  sober  track. 

When  Mr.  Tiffany  came  to  me  with  an  order 
for  the  drop-curtain  of  a  theater,  I  did  not  trouble 
myself  about  a  scheme  for  it,  knowing  that  it 
had  probably  taken  exact  and  interesting  form 
in  his  own  mind.  It  was  a  beautiful  lesson  to  me, 
this  largeness  of  purpose  in  needlework.  The 
design  for  this  curtain  turned  out  to  be  a  very 
realistic  view  of  a  vista  in  the  woods,  which 
gave  opportunity  for  wonderful  studies  of  color, 
from  clear  sun-lit  foregrounds  to  tangles  of  misty 
green,  melting  into  blue  perspectives  of  distance. 
It  was  really  a  daring  experiment  in  methods  of 

[124] 


AMERICAN   TAPESTRY 


applique,  for  no  stitchery  pure  and  simple  was  in 
place  in  the  wide  reaches  of  the  picture.  So  we 
went  on  painting  a  woods  interior  in  materials  of 
all  sorts,  from  tenuous  crepes  to  solid  velvets  and 
plushes.  It  was  one  of  Mrs.  Holmes'  silk  pictures 
on  a  large  scale,  and  was  perhaps  more  than 
reasonably  successful.  I  remember  the  great  de- 
light in  marking  the  difference  between  oak  and 
birch  trees  and  fitting  each  with  its  appropriate 
effect  of  color  and  texture  of  leaf;  and  the  building 
of  a  tall  gray-green  yucca,  with  its  thick  satin 
leaves  and  tall  white  pyramidal  groups  of  velvet 
blossoms,  standing  in  the  very  foreground,  was 
as  exciting  as  if  it  were  standing  posed  for  its 
portrait,  and  being  painted  in  oils. 

The  variety  of  our  work  was  a  good  influence 
for  progress.  We  were  constantly  reaching  out 
to  fill  the  various  demands,  and,  beyond  them,  to 
materialize  our  ideals.  As  far  as  art  was  con- 
cerned in  our  work,  what  we  tried  to  do  was  not 
to  repeat  the  triumphs  of  past  needlework,  but 
to  see  how  far  the  best  which  had  been  done  was 
applicable  to  the  present. 

If  tapestries  had  been  the  highest  mark  of  the 
past,  to  see  whether  and  how  their  use  could  be 

[1251 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

fitted  to  the  circumstances  of  today,  and,  if  we 
found  a  fit  place  for  them  in  modern  decoration, 
to  see  that  their  production  took  account  of  the 
methods  and  materials  which  belonged  to  present 
periods,  and  adapted  the  production  to  modern 
demands. 

We  soon  came  to  the  ideal  of  tapestries  which 
loomed  above  and  beyond  us  and  had  been 
reached  by  every  nation  in  turn  which  had  applied 
art  to  textiles,  but  in  all  except  very  early  work 
the  accomplishment  had  been  more  of  the  loom 
than  of  hand  work.  My  dream  was  of  American 
Tapestries,  made  by  embroidery  alone,  carrying 
personal  thought  into  method.  We  decided  that 
there  was  no  reason  for  the  limitation  of  the 
beautiful  art  of  needlework  to  personal  use,  or 
even  to  its  numerous  domestic  purposes.  This 
most  intimate  of  the  arts  of  decoration  has  been 
in  the  form  of  wall  hangings  for  the  bare  wall 
spaces  of  architecture  from  the  time  when  dwell- 
ings passed  their  first  limited  use  of  protec- 
tion and  defense.  After  this  first  use  of  houses 
came  the  instinct  and  longing  for  beauty,  and  the 
feeling  which  prompts  us  in  these  wider  days 
of  achievement  to  cover  our  wall  spaces  with 

[126] 


Courtesy  of  the  Edgeieater  Tapestry  Looms 
SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY   DESIGN   TAPESTRY  PANEL 


AMERICAN   TAPESTRY 


pictures,  moved  our  far-off  forefathers  and  moth- 
ers to  offer  their  skill  in  spinning,  and  weaving, 
and  picturing  with  the  needle  hangings  to  cover 
the  bareness  of  the  home.  This  impulse  grew 
with  the  centuries,  until  tapestries  were  a  natural 
art  expression  of  different  races  of  men,  so  that 
we  have  Italian,  Spanish,  French,  Dutch  and 
English  tapestries,  each  with  national  tastes  and 
characteristics  of  production.  As  time  went  on, 
inevitable  machinery  undertook  the  task  of  making 
wall  hangings,  with  the  whole-hearted  help  of  all 
who  had  given  their  lives  to  art,  and  tapestries 
had  become  a  part  of  the  riches  of  the  world. 
When  the  greater  part  of  the  world's  wealth  was 
in  the  possession  of  Popes  and  Princes,  it  was 
usual  to  expend  a  goodly  portion  of  it  in  works 
of  art.  Pictures  and  tapestries  and  exquisitely 
wrought  metal  work,  weavings  and  embroideries, 
made  priceless  by  costly  materials  and  the 
thoughts  and  labor  of  artists,  were  reckoned  not 
as  a  sign  of  wealth  but  as  actual  wealth.  They 
were  really  riches,  as  much  as  stocks  and  bonds 
are  riches  today.  Such  things  were  accumulated 
as  anxiously  and  persistently  as  one  accumulates 
land  or  houses,  or  railroad  bonds  or  stocks,  and 

(127] 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

the  buyer  was  not  poorer;  but  in  fact  he  was 
richer  for  money  expended  in  this  fashion.  This 
everyday  financial  fact  lay  underneath  and 
supported  the  beautiful  pageant  of  the  fifteenth 
and  sixteenth  centuries,  gilding  them  with  a 
radiance  which  has  attracted  the  admiration  and 
excited  the  wonder  of  all  succeeding  years. 

That  flower  and  culmination  of  labor  which 
we  call  art  was  the  capital  of  those  early  centuries, 
and  took  the  place  of  the  Bank,  the  Bourse,  and 
the  Exchange  which  later  financial  ideas  have 
created. 

It  is  in  a  great  measure  to  this  fact,  as  well  as 
to  the  intense  love  for,  and  appreciation  of,  art 
which  distinguished  this  period,  that  we  owe  the 
wonderful  treasures  which  have  enriched  the 
later  world.  They  belong  no  longer  to  princes  and 
prelates,  but  to  governments  and  museums,  and 
are  object  lessons  to  the  student  and  the  artisan, 
and  an  inheritance  for  both  rich  and  poor  of  all 
mankind. 

Except  in  the  light  of  these  treasures  of  art, 
it  would  be  difficult  to  understand  how  far- 
reaching  and  comprehensive  was  the  greed  of 
beauty  which  possessed  and  distinguished  the 

[1281 


AMERICAN   TAPESTRY 


centers  of  tapestry  production.  The  museums  of 
the  world  are  made  up  of  what  remains  of  them. 
The  pictures  and  tapestries,  the  weavings  and 
embroideries,  the  carvings  and  metal  work  which 
the  world  is  studying,  belonged  to  the  daily  life 
of  those  past  centuries.  The  stamp  of  thought 
and  the  seal  of  art  were  set  upon  the  simplest 
conveniences  of  life.  The  very  keys  of  the  locks 
and  hinges  of  the  doors  were  designed,  not  by 
mere  workers  in  metal,  but  by  sculptors  and 
artists  who  were  pre-eminent  for  genius.  It  was 
in  the  spirit  of  this  period  that  Benvenuto  Cellini 
modeled  saltcellars  as  well  as  statues,  and  his 
compeers  designed  carvings  and  gildings  for  state 
carriages,  and  painted  pictures  upon  the  panels. 
Painters  of  divine  pictures  designed  cartoons  and 
borders  for  tapestries,  and  wreaths  and  garlands 
for  ceiling  pilasters. 

Among  the  names  of  painters  who  designed 
cartoons  for  tapestries,  we  find  those  of  Leonardo 
da  Vinci,  Raphael,  Titian,  Guido  and  Giulio 
Romano,  Albert  Diirer,  Rubens  and  Van  Dyck. 
Indeed,  there  is  hardly  a  great  name  among  the 
painters  of  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries 
which  has  not  contributed  to  the  value  of  the 

[129] 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

tapestries  dating  from  those  times.  Among  them 
all  none  have  a  greater  share  of  glory  than  the 
series  known  as  "The  Acts  of  the  Apostles," 
designed  by  Raphael  for  Pope  Leo  X,  in  the  year 
1515.  The  history  of  these  cartoons  is  full  of 
interest.  After  the  weaving  of  the  first  set  of 
these  tapestries,  which  was  hung  in  the  Sistine 
Chapel  and  regarded  as  among  the  greatest 
treasures  of  the  world,  the  cartoons  remained  for 
more  than  a  hundred  years  in  the  manufactory  at 
Brussels.  During  this  period  one  or  more  sets 
must  have  been  woven  from  them,  but  in  1630 
seven  were  transferred  to  the  Mortlake  Tapestry 
works  near  London,  having  been  purchased  by 
Charles  I,  who  was  advised  of  their  existence  by 
Rubens.  The  Mortlake  tapestry  had  been  estab- 
lished by  James  I,  who  was  greatly  aided  by 
the  interest  of  the  then  Prince  of  Wales,  and  the 
Duke  of  Buckingham.  It  is  charming  to  think  of 
"Baby  Charles"  and  "Steenie"  busying  them- 
selves with  the  encouragement  of  art  in  the  way 
of  the  production  of  tapestry  pictures,  and  after 
the  accession  of  the  Prince,  to  follow  the  progress 
of  this  taste  in  the  purchase  of  the  famous  cartoons, 
and  the  employment  of  no  less  a  genius  than 

[130] 


•<  3 

OT3 

If 


_ 
2.  3 


ill 

e    o-     f 

£§  § 

—  8,    M 


its 


AMERICAN   TAPESTRY 


Van  Dyck  in  the  composition  of  new  and  more 
elaborate  borders  for  them.  It  was  probably 
during  the  reign  of  Charles  that  these  glorious 
compositions  went  into  use  as  illustrations  of 
Biblical  text,  for  we  find  "Paul  preaching  at 
Athens,"  "Peter  and  Paul  at  the  Beautiful  Gate 
of  the  Temple,"  and  "The  Miraculous  Draught  of 
Fishes"  figuring  as  full-page  frontispieces  to 
many  old  copies  of  King  James*  Bible.  After  the 
tragic  close  of  the  reign  of  King  Charles,  the 
treasures  of  tapestries  he  had  accumulated  were 
dispersed  and  sold  by  order  of  Cromwell;  but 
the  cartoons  remained  the  property  of  the  nation 
and,  though  lost  to  sight  for  another  hundred 
years  or  so,  finally  reappeared  from  their  obscurity, 
at  Hampton  Court,  and  in  these  later  years, 
at  the  Kensington  Museum,  have  again  taken 
their  place  as  one  of  the  most  valuable  lessons  of 
earlier  centuries.  It  was  probably  the  story  of 
these  cartoons  which  inspired  the  determina- 
tion which  had  taken  possession  of  us,  to  do  a 
real  tapestry,  something  greatly  worthy  of  ac- 
complishment. 

When    we    came    to    the  decision    to    create 
tapestries,  the  actual  substance  of  them,  as  well  as 

[1311 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

the  art,  was  a  thing  to  be  considered.  The  wool 
fiber  upon  which  they  were  usually  based  was  a 
prey  to  many  enemies.  Dust  may  corrupt  and 
moths  utterly  destroy  fiber  of  wool,  but  dust 
does  not  accumulate  on  threads  of  silk,  neither 
are  they  quite  acceptable  to  the  appetite 
of  moths.  Therefore,  we  reasoned,  if  we  did 
work  which  was  worthy  of  comparative  im- 
mortality, it  must  be  done  with  comparatively 
imperishable  material.  Fiber  of  flax  and  fiber  of 
silk  shared  this  advantage,  and  the  silk  was 
tenacious  of  color,  which  was  not  the  case  with 
flax;  therefore  we  chose  silk  and  went  bravely  to 
our  task  of  creating  American  tapestries. 

Having  decided  upon  our  material,  we  con- 
sulted with  our  friendly  and  interested  manu- 
facturers, and  finally  ordered  a  broad,  heavily 
marked,  loosely  woven  fabric  which  would  hold 
our  precious  stitches  safely  and  show  them  to 
advantage.  The  woof  of  the  canvas  upon  which 
we  were  to  experiment  was  also  of  silk,  not  fine 
and  twisted  like  the  warp,  but  soft  and  full 
enough  to  hold  silk  stitchery.  In  this  way  the 
face  of  the  canvas,  or  ground,  could  be  quite 
covered  by  a  full  thread  of  embroidery  silk  passed 

[132] 


MIXXEHAHA  LISTENING  TO  THE  WATERFALL 

Drawn  by  Dora  Wheeler  and  executed  in  needle-woven  tapestry  by 
The  Associated  Artists.  1884. 


AMERICAN   TAPESTRY 


under  the  slender  warp  and  actually  sewn  into 
the  woof. 

Being  thus  fully  equipped  for  the  production 
of  real  tapestries,  well  adapted  to  the  processes  of 
what  I  called  "needle  weaving,"  since  the  needle 
was  really  used  as  a  shuttle  to  carry  threads 
over  and  under  the  already  fixed  warp,  the  next 
decision  rested  upon  the  subject  of  this  new 
application  of  the  art  and  the  knowledge  we  had 
gained  by  study  and  practice  and  love  of  textile 
art.  With  a  courage  which  we  now  wonder  at, 
we  selected  perhaps  the  most  difficult,  as  it 
certainly  is  the  most  beautiful,  of  surviving 
tapestries,  "The  Miraculous  Draught  of  Fishes," 
the  cartoon  of  which,  designed  by  Raphael,  is  at 
present  to  be  seen  and  studied  at  the  Kensington 
Museum  in  London.  The  decision  to  copy  this 
was  perhaps  influenced  by  the  fact  that  it  was 
the  only  original  cartoon  of  which  I  had  knowl- 
edge, and  my  summer  holiday  in  London 
was  spent  in  its  study,  and  schemes  for  its  exact 
reproduction.  As  it  was  spread  upon  a  wall  in 
museum  fashion,  a  drawing  could  not  be  actually 
verified  by  measurements,  but  an  expedient  came 
to  me  which  proved  to  be  satisfactory.  I  had 

[1331 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

two  photographs,  as  large  as  possible,  made  from 
the  cartoon,  and  one  of  them,  being  very  faintly 
printed,  copied  exactly  in  color;  the  other  was 
ruled  and  cut  into  squares,  and  was  again  photo- 
graphed and  enlarged  to  a  size  which  would  bring 
them,  when  joined,  to  the  same  measurements  as 
the  original  cartoon.  These,  very  carefully  put 
together,  made  a  working  drawing  for  my  tapestry 
copy,  and  the  lighter  photograph,  which  had  been 
most  carefully  water-colored,  gave  the  color  guide 
for  the  copy. 

It  was  interesting  to  find  the  perforations 
along  the  lines  of  the  composition  still  showing  in 
the  photographed  cartoon,  and  we  made  use  of 
them  by  going  over  them  with  pin  pricks, 
fastening  the  cartoon  over  the  sheet  of  silk  canvas 
woven  for  the  background,  so  that  there  was  no 
possibility  of  shifting.  Prepared  powder  was 
sifted  through  the  lines  of  perforation  and  fixed 
by  the  application  of  heat,  and  we  then  had  the 
entire  composition  exactly  outlined  upon  the 
ground.  After  that  the  work  of  superimposing 
color  and  shading  by  needle  weaving  was  a  labor 
of  love  and  diligent  fingers  during  many  months. 
Every  inch  of  stitchery  was  carefully  criticized 

[134] 


APHRODITE 

Designed  by  Dora  Wheeler  for  needle-woven  tapestry  worked  by 
The  Associated  Artists,   1883. 


AMERICAN  TAPESTRY 


and  constantly  compared  with  the  colored  copy, 
and  at  last  it  was  a  finished  tapestry  and  was 
hung  in  a  north  light  on  one  of  the  great  spaces 
of  the  studio,  where  it  was  an  object  of  expert 
examination  and  general  admiration. 

It  is  by  far  the  most  important  work  accom- 
plished by  needle  weaving  which  has  ever  been 
made  in  America,  and  is  as  veritable  a  copy  of  the 
original  as  if  it  were  painted  with  brush  and 
pigment,  instead  of  being  woven  with  threads  of 
silk.  The  low  lights  of  the  evening  sky,  the 
reflections  of  the  boats,  and  the  stooping  figures 
of  the  fishermen,  the  perspective  of  the  distant 
shore,  and  the  wonderful  grouping  in  the  fore- 
ground, keep  their  charm  in  the  tapestry  as  they 
do  in  the  picture.  Even  the  mystery  of  the 
twilight  is  rendered,  with  the  subtle  effect  we 
feel,  but  can  scarcely  define,  in  the  original 
drawing. 

It  has  been  a  curiously  direct  process  from  the 
hand  of  the  great  master,  to  this  new  repro- 
duction, although  it  stands  so  far  from  his  time 
and  life.  His  very  thought  was  painted  by  his 
very  hand  upon  the  paper  of  the  cartoon,  and  this 
painted  thought  has  been  photographed  upon 

10  [  135  ] 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

another  paper  which  has  served  as  a  guide  to  the 
copy. 

It  makes  us  sharers  in  the  art  riches  of 
Raphael's  own  time,  to  see  a  new  embodiment  of 
his  thought  appearing  as  a  part  of  the  nineteenth 
century's  accomplishments  and  possessions. 

After  this  achievement  we  naturally  began  to 
look  for  appropriate  use  for  the  small  tapestries, 
but  here  came  our  stumbling  block.  The  breed 
of  princes,  who  had  been  the  former  patrons  of 
such  works  of  art,  were  all  asleep  in  their  graves, 
and  knew  not  America,  or  its  ambitions,  and  our 
native  breed  was  not  an  hereditary  one,  building 
galleries  in  palaces,  and  collecting  there  the 
largest  of  precious  accomplishments  in  artistic 
skill  in  order  to  perpetuate  their  own  memories, 
as  well  as  to  enrich  their  descendants.  Our 
princes  were  perhaps  as  rich  as  they,  and  possibly 
as  powerful,  but  their  ambitions  did  not  usually 
extend  to  a  line  of  posterity.  Their  palaces  were 
contracted  to  a  "three  score  and  ten"  size;  for 
each  of  them,  no  matter  how  wide  his  capability 
of  enjoyment,  knew  that  it  was  personal  and 
ended  when  his  little  spark  of  life  should  be 
extinguished.  I  gladly  record,  however,  that  in 

[136] 


AMERICAN   TAPESTRY 


these  later  days  some  of  them  have  made  the 
American  world  their  heirs,  and  are  building  and 
enriching  museums  and  colleges,  making  them 
palaces  of  growth  and  enlightenment,  and  so  giving 
to  the  many  what  an  older  race  of  princes  built 
and  enriched  and  guarded  for  the  few. 

But  in  the  meantime  what  were  we  to  do 
about  our  tapestries?  They  were  costly,  very 
costly  to  produce,  and  although  we  took  account 
of  the  delight  of  their  creation  and  put  it  on  the 
credit  side  of  our  books,  along  with  the  fact  that 
the  weekly  pay  roll  of  the  tapestry  room  went  for 
the  comfort  and  maintenance  of  the  students 
whom  we  loved  and  cherished,  I  soon  realized  the 
fact  that  a  commercial  firm  could  not  be  burdened 
with  the  fads  of  any  one  member.  Before  I  had 
carried  this  conclusion  to  its  logical  end,  we  had 
opportunities  of  using  our  skill  worthily  in  several 
of  the  new  great  houses  of  the  time.  When  the 
Cornelius  Vanderbilt  house  was  erected  on  Fifth 
Avenue  and  Fifty-Seventh  Street  we  received  an 
order  for  a  set  of  tapestries  for  the  drawing-room 
walls.  These  were  executed  from  ideal  subjects 
and  of  single  figures.  I  remember  the  "Winged 
Moon"  among  them,  which  was  an  ideal  figure 

[1371 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

of  the  new  moon  lying  in  a  cradle  of  her  own 
wings.  This  was  but  one  of  the  set,  one  or  two 
of  which  we  afterward  made  in  replica  for  an 
exhibit  in  London.  There  was  no  lack  of  subjects  in 
our  background  of  American  history.  The  legends 
and  beliefs  of  our  North  American  Indians  were 
full  of  them,  and  one  of  the  first  we  selected  was 
the  lovely  story  of  "Minnehaha,  Laughing  Water," 
from  Longfellow's  "Hiawatha."  The  sketch  had 
been  sent  to  us  by  Miss  Dora  Wheeler,  as  the 
prize  composition  of  the  Saturday  Composition 
Class  at  Julien's  Studio  in  Paris. 

The  literary  past  of  the  country  furnished 
subjects  enough  and  to  spare,  and  if  we  wished  to 
walk  into  the  shadowy  realms  of  legend  and 
fiction,  there  were  the  picturesque  legends  of  the 
American  Indian  from  which  to  choose.  Our 
subjects  were  often  one-figure  designs,  as  such 
pieces  were  suitable  in  size  to  wall  spaces  and 
door  openings.  Of  course  commercial  considera- 
tions could  not  be  lost  sight  of  in  our  enthusiasm 
for  progress  in  textile  art.  Potter  Palmer,  the 
multimillionaire  of  Chicago,  was  building  at  the 
time  a  palace  home  on  the  Lake  Shore,  and  one 
auspicious  day  Mrs.  Palmer  bestowed  her  beauti- 

[138] 


AMERICAN   TAPESTRY 


ful  presence  upon  us,  and  was  mightily  taken 
with  our  tapestries.  Her  clever  mind  was  attracted 
by  the  "bookishness"  of  some  of  the  panels  of 
incidents  from  American  literature,  and  several 
of  them  went  to  beautify  the  great  house  on 
the  Lake  Shore,  in  the  form  of  several  panels  of 
portraits.  Mrs.  Palmer  was  a  delightful  patron, 
her  own  enjoyment  of  art,  in  any  of  its  forms, 
amounted  to  enthusiasm,  and  her  great  physical 
beauty,  to  a  beauty  lover,  made  every  visit  from 
her  an  epoch.  I  have  never  seen  the  face  of  an 
adult  woman  who  has  had  the  experience  of  wife- 
hood  and  motherhood  which  retained  so  perfectly 
the  flawless  beauty  of  childhood.  I  have  often  gazed 
at  the  angelic  face  of  some  child,  and  wondered 
why  each  year  of  life  should  wipe  out  some  ex- 
quisite line  of  drawing,  or  absorb  the  entrancing 
shadows  which  rest  upon  the  face  of  childhood. 
It  was  a  great  satisfaction  to  personally  assist 
in  the  furnishing  of  the  home  of  this  beautiful 
aristocrat,  whose  own  law  allowed  of  no  infringe- 
ment by  our  mighty  three,  having  been  shaped 
in  a  mind  enriched  by  much  classical  study  and 
constant  acquaintance  with  the  beautiful. 
When  our  embroideries  and  needlework  had 

1139] 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

taken  their  place  in  this  country,  we  were  asked 
to  make  part  of  an  Exhibition  of  American  Art 
in  London.  This  we  were  very  glad  to  do,  for 
the  artistic  gratification  of  being  able  to  measure 
what  we  were  doing  with  the  best  art  of  the  kind 
abroad.  It  was  also  pleasant  to  be  considered 
worthy  company  with  the  best  in  our  own  land, 
to  rub  shoulders  with  our  best  painters,  our 
great  makers  of  stained  glass,  leaders  who  take 
genuine  pleasure  in  ideal  work.  Of  course  this 
applies  to  amateur  work  only,  as  professional 
decoration  must  accord  with  the  general  plan 
which  has  been  selected. 

I  had  reason  to  think  that  the  Exhibition  made 
by  the  Associated  Artists  at  Chicago  was  of 
lasting  use  to  all  lovers  of  needlework,  the  world 
over,  since  so  many  other  races  came  there  to 
get  their  world  lessons.  I  learned  much  that  was 
of  value  to  me  from  familiar  study  of  the  exhibits 
from  different  countries,  from  their  excellencies 
and  differences  and  the  reasons  why  such  wide 
divergences  existed,  and  from  observation  of  the 
people  themselves  who  produced  them — for  many 
of  the  exhibits  were  in  charge  of  practical  needle- 
workers  who  knew  the  history  of  their  art  from 

[140] 


FIGHTING  DRAGONS 

Drawn  by  Candace  Wheeler  and  embroidered  by 
The  Associated  Artists,   1885. 


AMERICAN   TAPESTRY 


its  very  beginning.  I  found  more  of  interest  in 
Oriental  art  from  seeing  that  it  was  not  merely  a 
perfunctory  repetition  of  stitches  and  patterns, 
but  that  there  was  a  stanch,  almost  a  religious, 
integrity  in  doing  the  thing  exactly  as  it  had 
been  done  by  generations  of  forefathers,  and 
that  the  silks  and  tissues  and  flosses  and  threads 
of  gold  were  the  best  the  world  produced.  In 
the  presence  of  such  fidelity,  what  mattered  it 
that  the  borders  and  blocks  were  formed  of 
angles,  or  zigzags,  or  squares,  or  any  other  fixed 
and  mechanical  shapes?  The  spirit  of  it  was  true 
to  its  race  and  traditions.  In  the  face  of  it,  all 
our  beautiful  copies  of  flowers,  and  growths, 
and  gracious  forms  of  nature  seemed  almost  ex- 
perimental—  the  art  of  growing  and  changing 
nations. 

But  as  we  do  not  make  the  early  art  of  long 
existent  races  models  upon  which  to  shape  our 
search  for  the  most  beautiful,  the  persistence  of 
Eastern  form  in  embroidery  need  not  prevent  our 
progress  in  design.  I  made  an  interesting  note 
of  this  persistence  of  Eastern  design,  when,  many 
years  ago,  I  had  an  opportunity  of  examining 
some  mummy  wrappings  from  a  burial  ground  at 

[141] 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

Lima,  Peru.  They  were  wonderful  weavings  of 
aboriginal  cloth,  bordered  with  embroidery  done 
in  dyed  or  colored  threads  of  flax,  in  designs  as 
purely  Eastern  as  can  be  found  in  any  ancient  or 
modern  Eastern  embroidery.  How  could  it 
happen  that  the  ornamental  designs  of  the  Far 
East  and  the  Far  West  should  touch  each  other? 
Was  it  similarity  of  thought  knowledge,  the  kin- 
ship of  the  human  mind,  or  some  long-forgotten 
means  of  transmission  of  the  material  and  actual, 
of  which  we  all-knowing  moderns  do  not  even 
dream?  This  wonderful  South  American  em- 
broidery of  past  ages  antedated  many  antique 
remains  of  the  art  of  stitchery  which  we  treasure 
with  as  wide  a  margin  of  time  as  lies  between 
their  day  and  ours. 

Embroidery  has  become  a  dependence  and  a 
business  for  thousands  of  women,  and  it  is  this 
which  secures  its  permanence.  We  may  trust 
skillful  executants  who  live  by  its  practice  to 
keep  ahead  of  the  changing  fancies  of  society 
and  invent  for  it  new  wants  and  new  fashions. 
And  this,  because  their  chance  of  living  depends 
upon  it,  and  it  promises  to  be  a  permanent  and 
growing  art.  It  may,  and  will,  undoubtedly,  take 

[142] 


AMERICAN  TAPESTRY 


on  new  directions,  but  it  is  no  longer  a  lost  art. 
On  the  contrary,  it  is  one  where  practice  has 
attained  such  perfection  that  it  is  fully  equal  to 
any  new  demands  and  quite  competent  to  answer 
any  of  the  higher  calls  of  art. 


JL.    J.  .&.  Jk      O— *  **f    . 

w 


CHAPTER  VIII    A     THE  BAYEUX 
TAPESTRIES 

rHILE  a  description  of  this  most  im- 
portant work  of  women's  hands  may 
seem  somewhat  irrelevant  in  a  book 
devoted  to  the  development  of  the  art 
of  embroidery  in  America,  it  is  so  important  a 
link  in  the  subject  of  stitchery,  executed  as  it  was 
in  the  eleventh  century,  that  a  short  chapter  on 
this  most  interesting  and  vital  subject  may  not 
come  amiss. 

Among  all  our  present  possessions  of  early 
skill,  perhaps  nothing  is  more  widely  known  than 
what  is  called  the  Bayeux  Tapestry.  This  much 
venerated  work  is  not  tapestry  at  all,  but  a 
pictorial  record  in  outline,  done  with  a  needle,  as 
simply  as  though  written  in  ink,  at  least  according 
to  our  present  understanding  of  what  is  known 
as  tapestry. 

We  read  of  the  subject,  and  the  name  of 
William  the  Conqueror  looms  large  in  the  imagi- 
nation. We  think  of  the  tapestry  as  a  great 
illustrated  page  of  history,  large  in  proportion 
not  alone  to  the  deeds  it  chronicles,  but  to  their 

[144] 


THE   BAYEUX   TAPESTRIES 


importance  in  the  story  of  one  of  the  greatest, 
perhaps,  of  the  modern  races;  and  across  this 
illustrated  page  we  fancy  the  prancing  of  war 
horses  and  the  prowess  of  the  knight,  the  passing 
of  seas  and  the  march  of  armies,  with  all  the 
attendant  tragedy  of  circumstance. 

But  this  is  only  in  one's  mind.  The  reality  is 
a  more  or  less  tattered  strip  of  grayish-white 
linen,  two  feet  in  width  and  two  hundred  and 
thirty  feet  long,  and  along  this  frail  bridge  between 
the  past  and  present  march  the  actors  in  the 
great  conquest.  It  seems  but  an  inadequate 
pathway,  but  it  has  borne  its  phalanxes  of  men, 
its  two  hundred  horses,  its  five  hundred  and 
fifty-five  dogs  and  other  animals,  its  forty-one  ships, 
its  numberless  castles  and  trees,  its  roads  and 
farms  safely  through  all  the  intervening  years 
from  1066  to  1919,  and  it  still  holds  them. 

In  truth,  we  wonder  much  over  this  production 
of  the  past,  and  not  alone  over  the  heroes  who 
career  so  mildly  in  their  armor  of  colored  crewels 
on  the  linen  background.  We  wonder,  in  the 
first  place,  how  a  continuous  web  of  over  two 
hundred  feet  in  length  could  have  been  woven. 
Then,  we  know  that  lengths  of  woven  stuffs  are 

[145] 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

limited  only  by  the  requirements  of  commerce, 
and  that  Matilda  was  of  Flanders,  and  her  father 
had  learned  the  princely  trick  of  loving  and 
encouraging  manufactures,  and  had,  indeed, 
taught  it  to  his  daughter,  and  that  Flanders  was  a 
noted  center  of  manufacture.  Then  we  decide 
that  if  Matilda  had  called  for  a  strip  of  linen  two 
thousand  feet  long,  whereon  to  write  the  warlike 
history  of  a  spouse  who  began  his  gentle  part 
toward  her  (for  so  history  avers)  by  pulling  her 
from  her  horse  and  rolling  her  in  the  mud  because 
she  refused  to  many  him,  it  would  have  been 
forthcoming  as  easily  as  two  hundred.  Should 
the  Queen  of  England  require  a  stretch  of  linen 
as  long  as  from  England  to  America,  whereon  to 
record  the  successes  of  her  reign,  who  doubts  that 
it  would  be  supplied  her? 

So,  when  the  question  of  this  web  is  disposed  of, 
we  wonder  who  drew  all  these  figures  of  men  and 
horses,  for  Queen  Matilda  and  her  ladies  to  over- 
lay with  stitchery,  and  why  his  name  has  not 
come  down  to  us.  We  decide  within  our  minds, 
for  it  never  occurs  to  us  to  impute  such  ability 
in  drawing  to  the  Queen  or  her  ladies,  that  it 
was  the  work  of  some  monkish  brother  who 

[146] 


THREE  SCENES  FROM   THE  BAYEUX  TAPESTRY 


THE   BAYEUX   TAPESTRIES 


varied  his  illuminating  labor  upon  missals  and 
copies  of  the  Scripture  by  doing  these  worldly  and 
interesting  things. 

We  think  of  the  never  to  be  forgotten  Gerard 
in  The  Cloister  and  the  Hearth,  and  wonder 
if  it  was  some  monastery-trained  youth  like  him 
who  rested  from  the  creation  of  saints  and  angels 
upon  vellum,  to  draw  fighting  knights  upon  linen, 
and  whether,  perchance,  his  hushed  heart  burned 
within  him  at  the  stir  and  valor  of  the  deeds  he 
portrayed.  And  then  some  one,  better  informed 
than  we,  points  out  the  figure  of  a  dwarf,  nicely 
labeled  as  Turold — for  many  of  the  actors  in  this 
embroidered  story  are  labeled  in  delicate  stitches — 
and  tells  us  that  his  was  the  hand  that  set  the 
copy  for  all  the  happy  and  beloved  maids  of  the 
Queen,  and  the  hapless  and  perhaps  equally 
beloved  Saxon  maids.  We  wonder,  again,  how 
these  skillful  and  noble  Saxons  like  to  find  them- 
selves thus  writing  their  own  infelicities  and 
humiliations  for  all  the  world  to  see,  and  then — 
for  so  does  the  human  mind  go  groping  into 
motives  and  springs  of  action — we  wonder  if  their 
famous  skill  in  needlework,  of  which  the  wide- 
awake Matilda  must  surely  have  known,  put  it 

[1471 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

into  her  head  to  make  this  curious  life-record 
of  her  great  lord,  and  we  reflect  that  if  it  were  so,  it 
would  only  be  another  facet  of  her  many-sided 
ability. 

But  that  was  underneath  the  surface.  Outside 
was  the  queenly  magnificence  and  wifely  glori- 
fication of  her  lot,  a  smooth  current  of  irresistible 
prosperity.  Underneath  was  the  whirling  and 
buzzing  of  the  wheels  of  thought,  the  springs  of 
motion  which  governed  the  great  current. 

In  truth,  two  such  clever  thought  centers  as 
William  of  Normandy  and  Matilda  of  Flanders 
seldom  hi  the  world  have  made  a  conjunction, 
or  we  would  have  had  more  great  conquests  to 
record.  We  may  fancy  what  we  will  in  the  far 
background  which  this  slender  length  of  linen 
reaches,  all  the  byplay  which  accompanied  the 
guarded  life  of  the  castle,  the  religious  life  of  the 
cathedral  and  monastery,  the  colored  and  bannered 
pomp  of  duke  and  noble. 

It  was  all  mightily  picturesque,  with  its  con- 
trasts of  gorgeousness  and  privation,  but  probably 
Matilda  the  dexterous  thought  that  times  were 
good  enough  when  she  could  sit  in  safety,  sur- 
rounded by  her  maids  and  priests,  and  write  her 

[148] 


THE  BAYEUX   TAPESTRIES 


royal  journal  as  she  pleased,  with  a  threaded  sty- 
lus; and  well  for  us  that  she  elected  to  do  this,  al- 
though her  records  are  written  in  so  quaint  a 
fashion  that  amusement  and  interest  are  twin 
spectators  of  the  result. 

Two  borders,  upper  and  lower,  remind  one 
irresistibly  of  a  child's  processional  picture  on  a 
slate.  The  figures  are  done  in  outline  only,  colors 
corresponding  to  those  used  in  the  body  of  the 
work.  Each  border  is  some  six  inches  wide,  and 
has  the  air  of  a  little  running  commentary  or 
enlargement  of  the  main  story.  There  are  varia- 
tions and  incidents  which  could  not  perhaps  be 
put  down  in  the  main  body,  where  all  the  figures 
are  worked  solidly  in  the  stitch  which  has  been 
rechristened  "Kensington  stitch."  The  horses 
are  worked  in  red-brown  and  gray  crewels,  some 
of  them  duly  spotted  and  dappled,  the  banners 
and  gonfalons  carefully  wrought  in  the  colors 
and  devices  belonging  to  them.  The  whole  work 
follows  scrupulously  the  scenes  of  the  Conquest, 
giving  the  lives  of  the  actors  both  in  Normandy 
and  England,  as  well  as  the  transit  from  one 
country  to  the  other. 

The  first  scene  evidently  represents  Edward  the 

[149] 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

Confessor  giving  audience  to  Harold,  the  last  of 
the  Saxon  kings.  The  next  gives  the  embarkation 
of  Harold,  and  the  third  his  capture  in  France. 

Then  comes  the  death  of  Edward,  and  the 
tapestry  story  struggles  ineffectually  with  the 
incidents  of  his  death  and  funeral;  and  the  elec- 
tion of  Harold  as  King  of  England,  showing  him 
seated  crowned  and  in  royal  robes  under  a  very 
primitive  canopy.  After  this,  the  scene  shifts 
again  to  France,  and  portrays  the  preparations 
for  invasion  made  by  the  Duke  of  Normandy, 
who  was  called  by  the  people  of  the  country  he 
invaded  "William  the  Conqueror,"  and  who  have 
continued  to  know  him  only  by  that  name  through 
all  succeeding  centuries,  the  shame  and  sorrow  of 
vanquishment  quite  buried  under  the  glory  of  the 
performance,  Saxon  and  Norman  uniting  in  esteem 
of  the  successful  result. 

All  this  history  is  duly  set  forth  in  archaic 
simplicity  by  the  stitches  of  Queen  Matilda,  who, 
in  preserving  the  record  of  the  deeds  of  her 
doughty  lord,  has  set  down  also  a  record  of  herself 
as  the  ideal  wife,  who  glorifies  her  husband,  and 
merges  all  she  is  of  woman  into  that  condition — 
and  still  it  is  only  a  strip  of  linen  worked  in 

[150] 


THE   BAYEUX   TAPESTRIES 


crewels.  All  the  triumphs  of  the  great  Conqueror 
are  written  upon  it,  but  none  of  the  disappoint- 
ments. The  needlework  story  does  not  relate 
(how  could  it  when  Matilda's  active,  trained  and 
industrious  fingers  had  been  stilled  by  death?) 
the  sorrows  which  overcame  even  her  fortunate 
hero — that  his  body  was  robbed  of  its  clothing, 
and  lay  naked  and  dishonored  beside  a  disputed 
grave,  where  even  the  solemn  claim  of  death  to 
burial  was  resisted  until  an  old  wrong  "done  in 
the  body"  was  righted.  And  though  his  son 
reigned  after  him,  and  he  founded  a  royal  line, 
perhaps  one  of  the  greatest  enjoyments  of  his 
successful  life  consisted  in  watching  the  fingers 
of  his  well-beloved  Matilda  as  they  worked  this 
linen  record. 

Of  course  it  is  the  great  events  it  portrays  and 
the  human  interest  it  holds  which  make  this 
tapestry  exceedingly  valuable,  for,  artistically, 
it  is  of  no  more  value  than  a  child's  sampler. 
But,  simple  as  it  is,  volumes  have  been  written 
about  it.  Scholars  and  historians  have  pored 
over  its  pictured  history,  money  without  stint 
has  been  spent  in  paper  reproductions  of  it, 
and,  finally,  the  whole  important  embroidery  so- 

[151] 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMBROIDERY  IN  AMERICA 

ciety  of  Leeds,  England,  spent  two  industrious 
years  in  copying  it,  and  earned  fame  and  envy 
thereby. 

The  wonderful  remains  of  the  work  of  skilled 
fingers  serve  to  dignify  the  art  of  which  it  is 
capable,  and  to  sing  a  varied  song  in  the  ears 
of  the  modern  embroiderer,  who  follows  her  own 
will  in  spite  of  time-hallowed  examples.  The 
women  of  today,  1920,  have  been  called  to  work 
that  is  widely  different  from  that  of  the  ages 
when  embroidery  was  a  natural  recourse  and 
almost  universal  practice,  but  it  is  an  art  which 
has  done  too  much  for  the  progress  of  the  world, 
in  all  its  different  phases,"  to  die,  or  to  cease  to 
progress.  There  will  always  be  quiet  souls,  whose 
lives  have  been  made  so  by  circumstances,  who 
will  find  solace  in  the  practice  of  needlework,  so 
we  may  safely  leave  with  them  an  art  which  has 
done  so  much  for  mankind. 


THE   END 


A     000109693 


